Right now BigFraction and Fraction are separate parallel classes. I propose altering this so that BigFraction extends Fraction, overrides its methods, but also keeps its own unique methods.
I think it would be an improvement to the API to have both classes share the same interface (and indeed an interface-based solution would be possible, but strikes me as overkill, since I don't see any additional classes beyond Fraction and BigFraction). BigFraction would in addition have its current methods to convert BigIntegers to ints and longs. Among the elegancies afforded by this change, if a Fraction operation causes overflow as previously discussed, a BigFraction could be returned and should be able to handle all further calls to Fraction unaltered. (This might not always be desired behavior, so Fraction may need to contain a setting to either throw and exception, or convert to BigFraction in case of overflow.) So I propose writing a ticket for this change. As sub-points on the ticket the BigFraction class could be conformed to Fraction class in terms of reduction of constants and producing a VALJO. Eric
