Maybe we could use something like stdint.h [1]. You could use a type
like int_fast16_t to ensure a minimum width of 16 while still getting
the benefits of native ints (if possible).
1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stdint.h
On 30 March 2011 15:20, Daniel Fischer
On Wednesday 30 March 2011 14:31:33, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:
Maybe, we should stop using Int altogether. Why not use Integer if we want integers, and try to implement Integer and its operations more efficiently?
Even getting near the performance of GMP with its probably hundreds of man- years of optimisation gone in is hard, beating it is a formidable task. Or were you thinking of making the calls to GMP faster? If that could be done, that would be very nice.
Int8, Int16, Int32, and Int64 are good when doing system programming, CInt is good when interfacing with C, but what is Int good for?
Speed. If you have computations you know won't overflow, it's good to have the native-sized Int and need not throttle things on 64-bit systems by using Int32 or on 32-bit systems by using Int64.
But in general, I agree that it would be good to use Integer instead of Int more often.
Cheers, Daniel