On Mon, May 03, 2010 at 10:42:03AM +0100, Sandeep Murthy wrote:
> The programs work fine for groups of order n <= 27, but not for n >= 28 - GAP
> says that a
> loop cannot over a range >= 2^28. Is this an absolute limit, or is this
> machine dependent?
Dear Sandeep Murthy, dear Forum,
Here are a few general remarks about ranges [a..b] in GAP.
These are (currently) implemented with some machine dependend restrictions:
The integers a and b and the length of the range must have absolute value
< 2^28 if GAP is compiled for 32-bit systems, and < 2^60 if GAP is compiled
for 64-bit systems. The reason for this limitation is efficiency of loops
over such ranges.
So, in your case I suggest two possible solutions:
(1) Use the 64-bit version of GAP on a 64-bit system. With a limit
of 2^60 you run into other problems before asking for larger ranges.
(2) Don't use a range in your loop, e.g.:
i := 1;
while i < 2^28-1 do
od;
needs about 40 seconds on my computer compared to
for i in [1..2^28-1] do od;
which takes about 5 seconds. So, the additional overhead in the
while-loop is probably neglectible if the body of your loop is not
empty. In the while-loop there is no restriction on the integer you
compare to, so 'while i < 2^32 do ...' is no problem.
Side remark: Very often it is still sensible to use a 32-bit version of GAP,
even on a 64-bit system because it is more memory efficient and often slightly
faster (depends on what exactly you are doing), see also the comment at:
http://www.math.rwth-aachen.de/RsyncLinuxGAP/index.html#32versus64
Best regards,
Frank
--
/// Dr. Frank Lübeck, Lehrstuhl D für Mathematik, Templergraben 64, ///
\\\ 52062 Aachen, Germany \\\
/// E-mail: frank.lueb...@math.rwth-aachen.de ///
\\\ WWW: http://www.math.rwth-aachen.de/~Frank.Luebeck/ \\\
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