Subject: Re: Common Lisp wish list item
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 20 Aug 2002 05:55:10 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3238811710520717@naggum.no>

* Bulent Murtezaoglu <bm@acm.org>
| Would you not consider (*-byte 32) declarations along with block compilation
| as a possible solution?

  For the particular case where I work specifically with modulo-32-bit
  integers, that would suffice, but where I need real integers, I do not want
  C semantics, but I would really appreciate being able to use the full
  machine width without going to bignums with the last 2 bits.

| Am I missing the point?

  What I really want is better integration with the hardware and other tools
  on the same hardware.

  On the other hand, if we had boxed integers in the normal case, I could
  imagine using interned integers and single-word boxes that could be upgraded
  very efficiently to a bignum when whole machine words were used in the
  computations.  The assembler programmer in me still protests against the
  shifting and reduced value space.  So I also wonder what people have done,
  not whether they are satisfied with the status quo, which I guess most
  people are, at least as far as doing anything about it.

-- 
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.