From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Philipp Stephani
= > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider=C2=A0 = =C2=A0 ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,=C2=A0 = =C2=A0 =C2=A0]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example.= ]]]
>
>=C2=A0 =C2=A0> Of course we could to do that. Hopefully there isn= 9;t existing
>=C2=A0 =C2=A0> Emacs Lisp code that relies on unsafe arithmetic /any= where/. If the
>=C2=A0 =C2=A0> functions + - * / operate on bignums (instead of dedi= cated bignum
>=C2=A0 =C2=A0> functions), would that mean we drop 32/64 bit integer= s entirely?
>
> To eliminate the current types for small integers would
> require rewriting of much of the C code in Emacs.
> It would be better to represent small integers as now,
> and have a different structure for larger integers.
>
I'd love to see Emacs get transparent bigint support. Python semantics = are
fine, as is using a normal int representation at the C level. Adding
transparent bigints as Lisp types doesn't require us to increase variou= s
Emacs core limits right away.