[perl #36330] [TODO] Create a BigNum PMC

[Andrew Whitworth via RT]

On Thu Feb 05 08:40:47 2009, particle wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 08:26, Andrew Whitworth via RT
> <parrotbug-followup at parrotcode.org> wrote:
> > 1) Are we going to be relying on libraries to handle our BigInt/BigNum
> > implementations, or are we intending to roll our own?
> 
> we can't rely on external libraries, whether for bignum, unicode, gc,
> or anything else. we can detect and use them, however, if they exist.
> 
> ~jerry
> 

Okay, maybe "rely" was the wrong word to use. Current implementation of
BigInt.pmc uses GMP if it's available, else it throws exceptions that
there is no bug number library present to implement the behavior. Same
is true of the unicode charset and ICU. We don't require ICU or GMP to
build parrot, but we don't implement these behaviors without them.

Question is: Are we going to do this same thing for BigNum (use a
library if present, throw sane exceptions otherwise), or are we going to
roll our own BigNum implementation?

-- 
Andrew Whitworth
a.k.a Whiteknight