bignums, gmp, bytestring, .. ?

[John Meacham]

On Sat, Nov 18, 2006 at 04:46:24PM -0500, Peter Tanski wrote:
> The simple problem with Haskell and Integer is that, according to the  
> Standard, Integer is a primitive: it is consequently implemented as  
> part of the runtime system (RTS), not the Prelude or any library  
> (though the interface to Integer is in the base library).  For GHC,  
> compiling with -fno-implicit-prelude and explicitly importing only  
> those functions and types you need the won't get rid of Integer.   
> Possible solutions would be to implement the Integer 'primitive' as a  
> separate library and import it into the Prelude or base libraries,  
> then perform an optimisation step where base functions are only  
> linked in when needed.  Except for the optimisation step, this  
> actually makes the job easier since Integer functions would be called  
> using the FFI and held in ForeignPtrs.  (I have already done the FFI- 
> thing for other libraries and a primitive version of the replacement.)

there is no requirement that Integer be a primitive. a plain old
implementation in haskell or via the FFI is certainly a valid one.

        John



-- 
John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈