This seems weird to me: sage: (-10).bits() [0, -1, 0, -1]
It makes it look like binary now includes -1 along with 0 and 1, making it..ternary? I guess that the bits() function is supposed to satisfy x == sum(b*2^e for e, b in enumerate(x.bits())) ...but you have to interpret b as a regular integer -- and not a bit -- for that to be true, since -1 equals 1 in the integers mod 2. And indeed, the parent of all the "bits" is the Integer Ring and not GF(2) or Integers(2). At the very least, I think this deserves a note in the bits() documentation. Or, what might be less popular, a change to bits() to somehow return a sign -- maybe a tuple (sign, [list of bits])? Thoughts? Dan -- --- Dan Drake ----- http://math.pugetsound.edu/~ddrake -------
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