"James Youngman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 11:57 AM, Jim Meyering <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Actually, I've wanted coreutils' factor program to work >> with arbitrary-precision numbers for a long time. >> This is mentioned briefly in TODO. For more detail, see these >> search results: >> >> >> http://search.gmane.org/search.php?group=gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.bugs&query=factor+gmp > > I have a working GMP-based version (essentially, it's the example ...
Great! Thanks for working on that. > Given these performance characteristics, I would not be adverse to > using the GMP implementation for all sizes of input. However, there > is also the maintenance consideration. We must maintain a non-GMP > implementation for systems which lack GMP (or decline to use it). I > would in general be concerned about bit-rot in the non-GMP > implementation, so I guess it's worth using it unconditionally for > some subset of inputs in order to be sure it really works for those > who must use it. I don't think we need to worry much about bit rot... if we add an option that will make factor use the 64-bit-limited code, and maybe another to use the GMP-based version (or fail if it's not available). Then it'd be easy to test both via "make check". _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
