Re: Extended binary numbers

From: William Kempf (sirwillard_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-09-21 10:59:47

--- In boost_at_[hidden], Beman Dawes <beman_at_e...> wrote:
> 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.

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

At least very similar.  A bigint type leaves a few operations 
ambiguous as to implementation.  For instance, bit manipulation 
operators may not be intuitive when the bitsize is variable.  
Typically the implementations I've seen assume bits to be 0 beyond 
the size of the actual storage for this.  More complex is the shift 
operators.  >> will obviously drop a bit the same as it does with 
built in integral types.  But what about <<?  Does it drop a bit or 
scale the size?

Bill Kempf