Re: [boost] Re: Extended binary numbers

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-09-21 10:26:33

At 01:53 PM 9/21/2000 +0000, William Kempf wrote:

 >He was responding to my post, and I've seen his bigint before, so I
 >feel entitled to respond here.
 >
 >Yes, it has advantages, as well as disadvantages.  The two are
 >distinct types, and I was proposing that we need both types.  A
 >bitint is a fixed size integer, where you specify the bit-size.
 >While not as fast as built in integer types it is still relatively
 >fast and allows you to have very large integers as well as
 >specifically sized integers (such as an int64_t for compilers that
 >don't have built in 64 bit integers).
 >
 >Mean while, a bigint is a variably sized integer.  As you make
 >calculations on the bigint it's size (bit-size) will increase to
 >accomodate the results.  So the size starts out minimal to save
 >space, but if use dictates that it needs to be larger it will scale
 >up as much as memory will permit.  Calculations are much slower on
 >such a type in comparison to built in types or bitint, but the
 >flexibility in scaling can be quite important for some cases.
 >
 >So, they have different advantages/disadvantages and are used to
 >solve different problems.

Presumably the interfaces should be either the same or very similar?

--Beman