Thanks for the feedback so far. Most options we have considered involve having an int64 (i.e. signed) integer object with the most negative value as the NA marker.
Alternate strategies for representing NA values are possible, but would involve much more extensive redesign, both in base R and in package space. I don't yet see a strong enough case to justify the cost, but maybe one can be made. Best, luke On Fri, 24 Jul 2026, [email protected] wrote:
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 ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
