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From: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <p...@informatimago.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: bignums in clisp
Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2012 17:21:01 +0200
Organization: Informatimago
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Paul Wallich <p...@panix.com> writes:

> On 10/2/12 10:54 AM, Ian Clifton wrote:
>> Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> writes:
>>
>>> In article <20120928140653....@kylheku.com>,
>>>   Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> They are not "bigger", just more, err, "magnitudinous"!
>>>>
>>>> Bigger means, strictly, occupying more RAM. :)
>>>
>>> It obviously depends on the context. I'm pretty sure he meant it in the
>>> normal, mathematical sense, in which 10 is bigger than 9.
>>
>> I suppose it would be possible—not perhaps sensible, but possible—to
>> have a Lisp implementation whose bignum type had a length which could
>> expand as necessary beyond integer to itself become a bignum of the same
>> kind. Such a Lisp could represent any integer, I guess.
>
> Aren't you going to run out of memory long before then? Perhaps there
> should be bignums with some kind of sparse-byte or runlength encoding.

Of course.  There are a finite number of integers whose lengths are
smaller than the number of particules in the Universe.  On the other
hand, there are an infinite number of integers whose lengths are bigger
than the number of particules in the Universe.  Such a trivial truth
doesn't seem to be known even by "educated" people.  I despair of
humanity. 

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.