GSoC 2011 project idea: GMP bindings

[Bob Kuo]

Hello Parrot people!

I've been thinking about making GMP bindings for Parrot.  Here's the
task on the wiki:

GNU Multi-Precision Library (GMP) bindings for Parrot ¶

    * Difficulty: < 3 / 5>
    * Links of Interest:  http://gmplib.org/
http://search.cpan.org/dist/Math-GMPz/
    * Possible Mentors: dukeleto
    * Details: Porting Math::GMPz (integer functions) to Parrot. This
will allow many cryptography and number theory libraries to be written
on top of this. Parrot currently knows how to detect GMP and uses a
small subset of GMP functions for BigInts and BigFloats, but more
functions are needed to implement libraries on top of it.
    * Expected Deliverables: Pure PIR PMCs that wrap NCI calls to GMP,
tests, documentation

I think a major benefit would be that any HLL would get "free"
BigNumber / BigRational / BigDecimal types.  It is also a stepping
stone for more complex math and cryptographic libraries.  I'd
appreciate any feedback about this project.  I'm bubaflub on IRC and
you can email me directly.

Thanks,

Bob