On Monday, December 31, 2012 19:56:11 monarch_dodra wrote: > I'm asking this as a end user: > > It was my understanding that cent/ucent where more or less > abandoned as native types.
Abandonded? They were specifically reserved for being used for 128-bit signed and unsigned types at an indeterminate point in the future. Nothing was abandonded, but nothing has been needed either, so it hasn't been implemented. > But would it be possible to have Cent/UCent as library types? > > We have Complex, and Walter recently proposed the HalfFloat type. > > Why not Cent and UCent? > > Is it too complex for library code? I'd suspect you need to catch > overflow flags for efficient carry over, but D has built-in asm, > so that shouldn't be too complicated... Should it? > > Or do we already have some sort of generic (statically sized) big > inter, eg: > Big!128 or UBig!128? Or if not, would we want that? > > Should I open an ER for either of the two ideas? I'd argue for sticking to BigInt if you want big numbers rather than adding the complication of adding a Cent and UCent library type. To get them right, you need a fair bit of what BigInt has anyway. What gain is there in having Cent or UCent over just using BigInt? I could see benefit in 128 bit built-in types, but I don't see what the point is of library types for them, not when we already have BigInt. - Jonathan M Davis
