Thursday, July 20, 2006

Arbitrary length Integer/Arbitrary precision Double Classes [Ari Weinstein]

by BCLTeam via BCL Team Blog on 7/20/2006 1:02:00 PM

Another set of functionality we may want to add in Orcas are classes which can be an integer of arbitrary length, and a double of arbitrary precision (which could essentially be the arbitrary length integer with a decimal offset).  Aside from this type itself, we are interested in what related functionality you would be looking for. 

• What functions do you wish we had in System.Math that you could use on one of these types?
• What types of conversions are you looking for (aside from conversion to int and double, respectively)
• In what cases can you see these types being extremely useful?  Some we have identified are crypto and general scientific work.
• IronPython (Python for .NET) already has an implementation of these types, what’s great about this type, and is there anything that you wish it had?

Looking forward to some great feedback!

            -Ari