Re: Fortran was NOT higher level than C. Was: Computer architects leaving Intel...

Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:

On Thu, 5 Sep 2024 13:04:24 +0300
Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> wrote:
>

I don't know much about typical users of Modern Fortran, but would
think that those coming from other languages, esp. from Python, would
appreciate built-in infinite-precision integers

>
Somehow I feel that both "infinite-precision integers" and "arbitrary
precision integers" are both misnomers.  But they are established terms
and I don't know how to express it better.  May be, "arbitrary range" ?

Knuth uses the term multiple-precision arithmetic, meaning operations
with no fixed upper limit on range.

In mathematical terminology, "infinite precision" is simply wrong;
that should be "unbounded precision".

Lisp has a long history of using the term Bignums (or is it BigNums?).

I would like to see programming move in the direction of referring
to 'integers' and 'limited-range integers', so multiple precision
is the default unless specified otherwise.

In Smalltalk, IIRC, there is class Integer, with subclasses
SmallInteger, LargePositiveInteger, and LargeNegativeInteger.
Both of the Large variants grow as needed.  In fact that applies
to SmallInteger objects as well:  10000 * 10000 * 10000 * 10000
starts off with SmallInteger (for 10000) but ends up giving a
LargePositiveInteger if SmallInteger cannot accommodate the
resulting value.