Re: [boost] rational.hpp

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-01-14 09:54:32

At 08:50 PM 1/13/2001 +0000, Paul Moore wrote:

 >On 12 Jan 2001, at 20:25, Stephen Silver wrote:
 >> But then someone will use a value that doesn't fit in a long (e.g., an
 >> unsigned long, or a larger non-standard type) and it will be converted
 >> to an int (or a long), with the wrong result.  I think all types that
 >> are implicitly convertible to IntType ought to be implicitly 
convertible
 >> to rational<IntType> as a matter of principle, and a template is the
 >> only way to do that.
 >
 >In practical terms, I can't imagine a program using two different
 >"integer-like" user defined types which are interconvertible. So in a
 >real program, the only types which exist which are likely to be
 >convertible to IntType are the builtin ones. Excluding such things
 >as long long (not universally supported) and non-standard types
 >like _int64, a conversion from long should cover it.
 >
 >Or should it? What about unsigned long? This may actually be
 >more of a can of worms than it seems at first glance...

Use boost::uintmax_t (from <boost/cstdint.hpp>) if what you want is the 
largest unsigned integer type the implementation will support.

--Beman