[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
[Date Index]
[Thread Index]
- Subject: Re: Suggestion : Built-in tuple type , was : packed structures
- From: Paul Ducklin <pducklin@...>
- Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2021 22:36:24 +0000
>You lose 64-bit integers if you do that, although
> 63-bit integers are possible by using the sign
>bit of the NaN to distinguish them, and the loss
>of one bit from a 64-bit integer is not likely to
>be a problem for the majority of applications.
Though any code that needed to do bit-manipulation work (XOR, shifts and so on) such as you need in hashing, cryptography and the like, would then surely need to be reworked to do everything in 32-bit chunks, just when most contemporary algorithms assume that the underlying hardware (or VM) can handle bit-twiddling operations in 64-bit chunks.
Having 63-bit integers feels like a case of “so near but yet so far” :-)
