Beman, Yes, I will add your sentence about complexities, and I will replace the word "optimal" with "optimized", as requested. Regards, Maarten. "Beman Dawes" <bdawes@acm.org> wrote in message news:e57q4j$ejc$1@sea.gmane.org...
"Andras Erdei" <aerdei@gmail.com> wrote in message news:7fe28deb0605260808j7af82ba6k897d3dca5d5dd435@mail.gmail.com...
On 5/24/06, Maarten Kronenburg <M.Kronenburg@inter.nl.net> wrote:
In the boost vault http://boost-consulting.com/vault/ under Math - Numerics the document infintdraft.pdf contains the Proposal for an Infinite Precision Integer for Library Technical Report 2, Draft. Any comments are welcome.
1. My main concern is that both the interface and the specification seem to be too implementation-driven.
For example, i don't see any reason for specifying the time-complexity
of
the operations...
The LWG discussed this, and decided that the time-complexity should be specified tightly enough to require implementations that are broadly useful, but not so tightly as to require heroic efforts by implementors.
5. Summary
It is high time to get an integer into the standard, but i would prefer a very minimal (strictly int-mimicking, no additional operations etc) one.
The LWG also discussed this, and would like a fairly minimal approach (incidently, it is for TR2, not the standard itself). However, certain additional functions are required for real-world applications, and are more efficient if part of the implementation.
Of course, the boost _implementation_ can provide a lot more than this minimal integer, and when we have enough experience, then we can bloat the interface to support common use-cases.
Yes.
Similarly, let's restrict implementations as less as possible: if someone ever comes up with a logarithmic integer class that provides O(N) multiplication in exchange for addition being O(N*logN), then let them do so...
It might be possible to allow such an implementation by providing an escape clause. Perhaps something like: "Complexity requirements for certain functions may be relaxed if doing so allows improved complexity for other functions. Such complexity relaxations and improvements shall be documented by the implementation."
Is that a good idea? I don't know enough about the problem domain to have a strong opinion.
--Beman
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