TVR%CCRMA-F4@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (02/18/87)
>> In Algol 68 there is a provision for infinite precision arithmetic >> (theoretically anyway--I don't know if anyone ever implemented such a compiler). Each time one prepends the word "long" to a variable declaration, the compiler doubles the number of bits reserved. (Or perhaps adds a constant factor--I forget.) "Infinite" precision arithmetic has existed for years in many (if not most) LISP compilers and has proven to be quite valuable in both abstract and applied mathematics. Some implementations are so transparent that an infinite loop involving a multiply in what you thought were ordinary integers is sometimes detected by slowly exhausting address space...
ark@alice.UUCP (02/19/87)
In article <4521@brl-adm.ARPA>, TVR%CCRMA-F4@SAIL.Stanford.EDU writes: > In Algol 68 there is a provision for infinite precision arithmetic > (theoretically anyway--I don't know if anyone ever implemented such > a compiler). Each time one prepends the word "long" to a variable > declaration, the compiler doubles the number of bits reserved. (Or > perhaps adds a constant factor--I forget.) Nope. Each length is required to be no shorter than the previous one, but the implementation is allowed to stop lengthening at some point. That point is defined by a built-in variable called intlengths.