[Haskell-cafe] Word128, Word256

[Maurí­cio CA]

Hi,

Do you think we could have the range of sizes for Int* and Word*
expanded to allow also 128 and 256 bits sizes?

My reason is that I have a long standing issue trying to bind to
C numerical libraries using complex numbers, as those are usually
structs passed by value. See this from GNU GSL:

   typedef struct
     {
       double dat[2];
     }
   gsl_complex;

I imagine I could do:

   type GslComplex = Word128 -- size would depend on architecture

and then write foreign declarations to have:

   get_real :: GslComplex -> CDouble
   get_imag :: GslComplex -> CDouble
   gsl_complex_sin :: GslComplex -> GslComplex
   gsl_complex_cos :: GslComplex -> GslComplex

Do you think this is a reasonable request?

Thanks for your attention,
Maurício