Re: logxxx and bignums

[Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow at alum dot mit dot edu>]

Dirk Herrmann wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, Dale P. Smith wrote:
> 
> > Hello List,
> >
> > I'm ready to extend the bit twidling functions to bignums, and my Boss
> > is ready sign off on on the copyright.
> >
> > A question before I start.  Negative numbers are coded as a positive
> > number with a sign bit?
> 
> I have another question:  Didn't Greg Harvey try to change guile't bignum
> interface to use gmp (The GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library)?  In
> gmp these functions are already implemented.
> 
> Maybe it would make more sense to finish Greg's changes and have guile use
> gmp.  Currently, after a couple of years, gmp seems to be under active
> development again (see http://www.swox.com/gmp/).  According to their
> web page the release of version 3.0 is scheduled for march.
> 

I'd be really happy to see Guile using gmp, even if bignum arithmetic
performance fell slightly, because it would take a lot of maintenance
hassle out of Guile itself.

However, that would be a fairly significant project. An easier first
step might be to resync the logxxx operations with SCM, which as
Radey mentioned already supports these operations on bignums.

I would gladly accept patches to effect either of these changes.

 - Maciej