[M3devel] what to do about file sizes being 32bits?

[Tony Hosking]

But should we really introduce restricted range multi-word arithmetic?
Why not instead make use of a general arbitrary range type like BigInteger.T?  (see the arithmetic package)

Again, I am acting devil's advocate here...

On 8 Jan 2010, at 14:33, Rodney M. Bates wrote:

> Well I don't agree that large files sizes are the only reason to have LONGINT.  They may be the
> specific case where this community has seen significant need.  But I have a number of times
> in the past (in various programming languages) needed multi-word arithmetic.  Moreover,
> new use cases will happen.  Especially, we can expect the proliferation of embedded devices
> to create then.  And I really believe it can be done without a lot of violence to the
> Language..
> 
> Tony Hosking wrote:
>> I am opposing LONGINT now (somewhat as a devil's advocate) because we introduced it simply to solve one very small problem: file sizes larger than INTEGER.  Perhaps we would have been better off sticking with a double-INTEGER record with lo/hi fields to represent file sizes?
>> Its introduction has added significant complication to the compiler, which I am frequently stumbling over (not to mention deep questions of typing in the language, as evidenced by the controversy over assignability between INTEGER and LONGINT).
>> 

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