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=head1 TITLE
Integrate BigInts (and BigRats) Support Tightly With The Basic Scalars
=head1 VERSION
Maintainer: Jarkko Hietaniemi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 05 Aug 2000
Version: 1
Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Number: 43
=head1 ABSTRACT
Currently Perl 'transparently' starts using double floating point
numbers when the numeric values grow too large for the native integer
types (int, long, quad) can no more hold quantities that large.
Because double floats are at their heart a lie, they cannot truly
represent large numbers accurately. Therefore sometimes when the
application would prefer to stay accurate, the use of 'bigints' (and
for division, 'bigrats') would be preferable. Classes of applications
that would prefer keeping true: cryptography, financial, statistics
(combinatorics).
=head1 DESCRIPTION
When the following pragma is in effect all numeric SVs (or, rather,
the numeric ops) would try to keep their results as big integers.
"Try to" because some math simply doesn't play along: sin(), ln(),
etc.
use bigint;
my $thats_big_baby = 5**5**5;
With only "use bigint" in scope 2/3 would fall back to .6666...7, but
with the following pragma, it would be truly 2/3:
use bigrat;
If one wants to limit the bigintism or -ratism to just a few select
scalars, one could use 'strong typing':
my bigint $i;
my bigrat $r;
=head1 IMPLEMENTATION
Either include (if there is a bigint library with the appropriate
features and licensing) a bigint library or implement one.
For performance reasons the bigint library needs to operate using the
native integer types. We don't want 1+1 engaging the whole bigint
machinery.
=head1 REFERENCES
RFC 38 [Standardise Handling Of Abnormal Numbers Like Infinities And NaNs]
