On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Christof Donat <cd@okunah.de> wrote:
Hi,
Just thinking out loud... is there ever any use case for big-integer exponents?
Yes, those are very large numbers :-). I would say that int32 exponent should be good enough (I don't mean that it should be used). I am eager to see applications of int64 exponent range.
Mathematics has some need to work with really very big numbers. That is whenever you try to disprove a hypothesis like e.g. the Rieman hypothesis by experimentally searching for a case where it does not hold.
That is nothing I am doing, but it to my mind when I thought about where to use exponents bigger than int32.
Is there any reason not to make the exponent type a template parameter so that the user can chose arbittrarily instead of trying to anticipate future uses of the library?
Just a crazy idea ... what about if the exponent is a big integer as well? And the mantissa ... guess you can go all crazy, hope this is supported by the library!
Christof