9 Feb
2007
9 Feb
'07
2:35 p.m.
On 2/9/07, Andreas Harnack <ah.boost.02@justmail.de> wrote:
You're right, there is a computational limit, but I wouldn't expect to a see a dimension with the power of 31. Exponends of 4 are about the highest I've ever seen, and (2*3*5*7*11*13*17)^3 still fits in 57 bits, so we might want to use long or even long long unsigned ints, but that should be fine for most situations.
Alright, I was thinking of 32 bits which would overflow (significantly?) earlier. Still, I feel slightly uneasy about this limitation as well as the asymmetry mentioned above. I also wonder how to extend this concept to allow defining custom units and/or unit systems in a sensible way. Regards, Michael