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Re: logxxx and bignums


Dirk Herrmann <dirk@ida.ing.tu-bs.de> writes:

> On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, Dale P. Smith wrote:
> 
> > Hello List,
> > 
> > I'm ready to extend the bit twidling functions to bignums, and my Boss
> > is ready sign off on on the copyright.
> > 
> > A question before I start.  Negative numbers are coded as a positive
> > number with a sign bit?
> 
> I have another question:  Didn't Greg Harvey try to change guile't bignum
> interface to use gmp (The GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library)?  In
> gmp these functions are already implemented.

Yep, and the bignum stuff should be complete, but it would take a bit
of doing to get them folded into the current numbers (or even more to
finish it up, which may not be a good idea at the moment, since it
might be better to wait and base the types on goops instead of the
roll-your-own object system I implemented... the existing code should
still be easy to use as a base for the operations, though, with
suitable wrapping to let goops handle the dispatch). Someone mentioned
that SCM currently has support for the logical ops with bignums, so
the path of least resistance right now would likely be to port that
code over to guile (numbers doesn't look like it's changed much from
SCM, so it shouldn't be a very big job).

> Maybe it would make more sense to finish Greg's changes and have guile use
> gmp.  Currently, after a couple of years, gmp seems to be under active
> development again (see http://www.swox.com/gmp/).  According to their
> web page the release of version 3.0 is scheduled for march.

That's great news :)

-- 
Gregh

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