From: William Kempf (sirwillard_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-09-21 08:42:48
--- In boost_at_[hidden], "Paul Moore" <gustav_at_m...> wrote:
> From: William Kempf [mailto:sirwillard_at_m...]
> > Also, I'd *really* like to see the related class bigint (or some
> > other name), which is an arbitrarily sized integer type that
scales
> > to larger sizes as needed. The bitint class is easier to deal
with,
> > and will work for 90% of the cases where you need large integral
> > types, but those 10% cases would be nice to cater to as well.
Along
> > these same lines we could use a bigfloat as well. This type might
> > use a fixed point representation and bigint in order to avoid the
> > normal binary to decimal conversion error.
>
> I've been thinking about these classes for a long time, since I did
the
> rational class. I haven't got round to it because of (a) lack of
time, and
> (b) lack of certainty as to what the most efficient algorithms are.
I have
> Knuth's book, but it's quite hard going...
Been there, done that. Knuth's algorithms are complex enough to make
for slow going if you want to fine tune it. Once I did so, I still
found it to be awfully slow in comparison to say, GNU MP.
Unfortunately, that library is very *nix based as well as very fine
tuned for specific architectures, making it very difficult to port.
Not to mention it's a C library.
Knuth's algorithms would be good enough for a start, IMHO. For
Boost, the interface is more important than the implementation. We
can always improve the implementation over time.
Bill Kempf