From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Paul Eggert Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: documentation of integers, fixnums and bignums Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2018 13:05:48 -0700 Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Message-ID: References: <0f632217-27ad-4f54-8ce0-480301fa2a86@cs.ucla.edu> <83pnxorm37.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1536437080 18594 195.159.176.226 (8 Sep 2018 20:04:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2018 20:04:40 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.9.1 Cc: Emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Sep 08 22:04:36 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1fyjTA-0004kp-3M for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 08 Sep 2018 22:04:36 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:45112 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fyjVG-00081D-Cc for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 08 Sep 2018 16:06:46 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:55824) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fyjUb-0007iV-53 for Emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 08 Sep 2018 16:06:05 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fyjUX-0000sD-Fn for Emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 08 Sep 2018 16:06:05 -0400 Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([131.179.128.68]:59468) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fyjUU-0000hz-3p; Sat, 08 Sep 2018 16:05:59 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id BDC631615A6; Sat, 8 Sep 2018 13:05:51 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (zimbra.cs.ucla.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10032) with ESMTP id 5hkpboz6k3_l; Sat, 8 Sep 2018 13:05:51 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 028A21615E8; Sat, 8 Sep 2018 13:05:51 -0700 (PDT) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at zimbra.cs.ucla.edu Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (zimbra.cs.ucla.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10026) with ESMTP id ya42QCmCFDgR; Sat, 8 Sep 2018 13:05:50 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from [192.168.1.9] (cpe-23-242-74-103.socal.res.rr.com [23.242.74.103]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id D4EC91615A6; Sat, 8 Sep 2018 13:05:50 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <83pnxorm37.fsf@gnu.org> Content-Language: en-US X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x X-Received-From: 131.179.128.68 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:229514 Archived-At: Eli Zaretskii wrote: > I think it's important for the Lisp programmers to > know what kind of objects they could get as return values. Maybe in > some distant future we will no longer care about the difference > between fixnums and bignums, but as of now, we still do. When Lisp programmers care about object types, they should care only whether the objects are integers. From a type point of view programmers shouldn't care whether an integer is small or large, any more than they should care whether a vector is small or large. Occasionally for pragmatic reasons it may make sense to point out that an integer might be large or not, just as it occasionally may make sense to point out that a vector might be large or not. But this should be the exception, not the typical case. What you see as "some distant future" I see as happening before the next release, by the way. Perhaps that explains why you're more in favor of documenting the current not-yet-finished situation, whereas I'm more in favor of keeping the documentation simple and implementing it that way.