Immediately, spatial indices come to mind. H3, S2, A5 are all represented
as 64 bit integers.
While an unsigned 64 bit integer, this semi-recent conversation shows a few
different strategies in {a5r} that were tried
https://github.com/belian-earth/a5R/pull/12
On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 11:25 Ravi Varadhan via R-devel <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Luke,
>
> This is an old post from 2015 on R-Bloggers that provided some examples:
>
> https://www.r-bloggers.com/2015/06/r-in-a-64-bit-world/
>
> Ravi
>
> ________________________________
> From: R-devel <[email protected]> on behalf of
> luke-tierney--- via R-devel <[email protected]>
> Sent: Friday, July 24, 2026 14:04
> To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
> Subject: [Rd] request for use cases for larger integers in R
>
>
> External Email - Use Caution
>
>
>
> R integers are current limited to a magnitude ot 2^31 - 1. Integer
> values up to a magnitude of 2^53 can be represented exatcly as
> doubles. At times it would be useful to be able to handle larger
> values.
>
> Several options for adding support for large integers to R are under
> consideration, each with advantages and disadvantages. To help with
> deciding how to move forward it would be helpful to have a collection
> of use cases where something is either difficult or impossible to
> achieve with the current R integer representations. Examples would be
> most helpful if they are concrete enough to allow us to build test
> cases.
>
> Thanks,
>
> luke
>
> --
> Luke Tierney
> Professor Emeritus
> Department of Statistics and
> Actuarial Science
> University of Iowa
> 241 Schaeffer Hall email: [email protected]
> Iowa City, IA 52242 WWW: http://stat.uiowa.edu/<
> http://stat.uiowa.edu/>
>
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