Re: [boost] New Boost.XInt Library, request preliminary review

Subject: Re: [boost] New Boost.XInt Library, request preliminary review
From: Christopher Jefferson (chris_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-03-30 17:49:26

On 30 Mar 2010, at 22:47, Scott McMurray wrote:

> On 30 March 2010 17:40, Chad Nelson <chad.thecomfychair_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>> 
>> Well, it's not called an "infinite range integer," after all. :-) Just
>> an unlimited one, because the library does not place any limits on it.
>> Only available memory, and the time needed to operate on something that
>> large, do.
>> 
> 
> The library *does* impose a limit: It has to allocate space, so
> there's necessarily the limit implied by the size of the type passed
> to the allocator to request the space.
> 
> Take, for instance:
> 
>    pow(xint(-1u), xint(-1u))
> 
> That should probably throw an overflow error from checking ahead of
> time that the amount of memory requested is infeasible in the same way
> as std::vector<int>(-1) will throw a std::length_error.

By the same argument, should we changed the hashed containers to "dynamically unspecified size hashed containers"?

Chris