Re: [boost] Infinite precision integer draft

From: Sebastian Redl (sebastian.redl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-05-28 09:22:43

David Abrahams wrote:

>Sebastian Redl <sebastian.redl_at_[hidden]> writes:
>
>  
>
>>The main (only, really, when it comes down to it) difference 
>>between a signed and an unsigned integer is that an unsigned integer is 
>>defined never to have a value less than 0. There are very valid reasons 
>>to enforce such a restriction, 
>>    
>>
>
>For example?
>  
>
Various physical quantities only make sense for non-negative values. It 
would be conceivable to use a boundless unsigned integer as the value 
type in the PQS library. Things like length - something cannot have 
negative length, and having that restriction enforced by the type itself 
would be convenient.
I have no doubt that there are other applications too. size_t is 
unsigned - of course, a boundless int should not be necessary for 
specifying array indices, but similar applications might exist.

Sebastian Redl