Re: [boost] Yet another bignum type

From: Maarten Kronenburg (M.Kronenburg_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-11-30 07:09:26

"Paul A Bristow"  wrote in message
> >Note that besides Daryle's new effort, which I haven't looked
> >at, there's
> >Boost BigInt by Ron Garcia and friends in the sandbox as well.
> > Not sure why we keep reinventing this but never finishing...
>
> As, I suspect, a representative of those who don't fully understand the
details of these discussions, I feel impelled to say how
> very strange I find it that Boost has several flavours of fancy points but
lacks any sort of bigger integer.
>
> Surely, bigger integers are quite fundamental; and have many potential
applications.
>
> I ask again if our review process is partly to blame for this.
>
> IMO people are not going to put in the boring work on finishing it to the
rightly rigorous review standard unless they feel they
> have a good chance of getting it through (and maybe not even then - but
would be happy for someone else to do the drudge work on
> testing and documentation). Do we need some process for deciding that a
particular design/prototype is a 'candidate for work towards
> a full review' in order to provide that encouragement?
>
> Paul

In my opinion software design is not mathematical proof that one design is
better than another, but there is the mathematical fact that the set of
unsigned integers is a subset of the integers, and the set of modular
integers is a subset of the integers. In the book "C++ Coding Standards" by
Herb Sutter and Andrei Alexandrescu, in chapter 64: "Blending static and
dynamic polymorphism judiciously", it reads:
"Due to its characteristics, dynamic polymorphism in C++ is best at: -
Uniform manipulation based on superset/subset relationships: Different
classes that hold a superset/subset (base/derived) relationship can be
treated uniformly."
In my "design decisions" I will quote this passage literally. Of course
anyone is free to propose a different design, and then the LWG would have to
make a decision which design to prefer.
Regards, Maarten
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