Numeric types

[Alaric B. Williams]

[fixed16 et al]
> This is not really such a bad idea, because there aren't nearly the
> wide variety of hardware datatypes that there used to be.  I haven't
> seen 18-bit or 36-bit integers in a long time.

Well, I'd worry about future compatability. Like trinary computers,
for example - they're more efficient on bus widths!

IMHO, types like:

(integer)  ;bignum
(ranged-integer 0 100)  ;fixnum
(module-integer 256)    ;fixnum w/o range checks, v. fast for  
                        ;power-of-2 modulus!

solve most of the problems, since we don't have mad ADA unions et al.

I'll read Henry's paper, anyway, and see if I need to revise this...


ABW
--
Alaric B. Williams (alaric@abwillms.demon.co.uk)

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