[M3devel] Integers

[hendrik at topoi.pooq.com]

On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 04:53:29PM -0500, Tony Hosking wrote:
> Then the base type of INTEGER would be LONGINT.
> 
> Thus, INTEGER operations would incur the expense of unnatural LONGINT 
> operations.

I get it.  It's not a matter of the size of the INTEGERs; it's a matter 
of the operations on them -- that operations on INTEGERs are limited to 
whatever size the computer processes efficiently, and that this limit is 
*checked* (at least in principle) for reliability.

-- hendrik

> 
> That is unacceptable.