[M3devel] Unbounded but finite LONGINT (was: Re: Integers

[hendrik at topoi.pooq.com]

On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 08:33:42PM -0500, hendrik at topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 07:53:07PM -0500, Tony Hosking wrote:
> > I think what you are advocating is Rodney's proposal + assignability 
> > of INTEGER and LONGINT + mixed arithmetic.
> 
> I thought Rodney's propsal still had the compiler impose a bound on the 
> size of LONGINT.  Or did I miss something?

In particular, I would have there be no FIRST(LONGINT) or LAST(LONGINT).

-- hendrik
> 
> I'm proposing to let the programmer use subranges of LONGINT that are as 
> long as he wishes.  And if the computer runs out of virtual memory to 
> store one of the programmer's long integers, well, that's the computer 
> imposing the limit, not the language.