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Re: Additions to the gh_ interface.


Jim Blandy writes:
> I have a question, though: what do people need bignums for?  Aside
> from handling the occasional fixnum overflow, and making the numeric
> system prettier, that is.  What applications benefit from bignums?

My biggest use is for cryptography, where fast bignum support is
super-critical. Most modern asymmetric ("public key") cryptographic
work consists of huge multiplications over integer fields of one sort
or another.

Perry