I wouldn't go so far as to say that it would be slower than the bignum conversions, but it would surely be slower than using 64 bit integers all over.
/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS
Previous text:
2003-02-26 23:57: Subject: Re: 64 bit ints
Why?
Show me the programming language where 0x80000000 fits in an 32bit integer.
Please note that adding unsigned integers as a type requires you to add a signed bit to the data, or simply use it as the sign bit, thus getting 33bit integers. Why not go for 64bit integers while you're at it?
In C and assembly it's possible to have signed and unsigned integers and not use more than 32bits because there is really no difference betwen them there, the programmer has to know if it's signed or unsigned, the compiler can also keep track of them and warn the programmer, because C is a statically typed language.
Pike is not. Thus, adding a new type for unsigned integers is not only pointless, it defeats the purpose (speeding things up) rather nicely, and will with 99.999% probability slow things down even more than the bignum conversions.
/ Per Hedbor ()