Re: Numeric literals, take 1

[Michael Lazzaro]

On Thursday, November 14, 2002, at 11:58  AM, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:

=section * Caveats when using BigNum/BigRats

All literal numbers are interepreted at compile-time,
before there is any information available about the type
of the variable that will store them.

Hmm.  In your example,

 my BigInt $i = 777_666_555_444_333_222_111;

perl has already read the text "BigInt" by the time it's gotten to the
number, so it has some idea of what type of thing the numeric literal
should be.  Besides, what I think should happen is that perl should
auto-adjust the type as it reads so that these are equivalent:

	my BigInt	$i = 777_666_555_444_333_222_111;
	my 		$i = 777_666_555_444_333_222_111;

In previous postings, Larry has said he hopes that there will be no "BigInt" and "BigNum" types: there will simply be "Int" and "Num", which will know to represent themselves in Big* form when necessary.


MikeL