Duncan Murdoch-2 wrote: > > I believe the C99 standard doesn't require that a 64 bit signed integer > type exist (only one that is 64 bits or more), so that would likely > cause some headaches. And we may still use some compilers that are not > C99 compliant, which may not have any type that big. > > But an even bigger problem is that there is a lot of type-specific code > in R. Adding another primitive type like a 64 bit signed integer would > mean writing arithmetic routines for that type and deciding how it > interacts with all the other numeric types. For example: what if you > add a floating point double to a 64 bit int? Normally adding a double > to an int coerces the result to double. But double isn't big enough to > hold a 64 bit int exactly. So doing something like x + 1 could lose > precision in x. > > So I imagine this will happen eventually, but it will not be easy, and > it probably won't happen soon. >
Thanks for the quick response. I have not delved too deeply into the R source to see how primitives are handled (I can certainly believe adding/ changing would be a significant chore, though). Mostly, I was curious as to where this fell on the priority schedule. Admittedly, 64-bit integers are certainly more of a convenience than a necessity. I sincerely appreciate all the hard work put into a world class project such as this. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/-R--double-precision-tp7708057p25050447.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
