Le 12/04/12 00:29, Neal Becker a écrit :
Vicente J. Botet Escriba wrote:
... I understand that providing access to the underlying type open possible extensions, but the internals would be quite complex when managing chunks of words. Should the library be limited to builtin underlying types without chunks? builtin underlying types is sufficient for anything I've ever needed. If I ever need>64 bits, I can always resort to chunking myself. If chunking can be implemented without substantial cost, then go for it. But, I don't want to pay for what I don't use.
Neither me. I think that it is a good compromise to provide only the underlying representation when the user has a way to master it or when it is not an implementation detail. When the fixed point is small enough to fill in a builtin the class can provide a underlying function that get it. It is more difficult to provide it when the class need to use chunks. I could understand that the user could need a way to get all the chunks without any associated semantic, but not the direct representation except if the representation is not an implementation detail. Best, Vicente