On Wed, 30 Apr 2014 13:52:48 PDT Bear <bear@sonic.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 2014-04-28 at 23:48 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
>
> > 1) Should R7RS-large require arbitrarily large (up to implementation
> > restrictions like memory) exact integers?
>
> It should require exact integers.  It should encourage range
> limits much higher than typical programming languages. It
> should not require an implementation to exhaust all memory
> and crash in an attempt to represent a very large exact integer.

I translate this to mean this: An implementation neeeds to
specify this limit in a symbolic constant in some form. It
should probably be a pair (x y) to  indicate x^y (otherwise
just the "constant" will eat up all memory!).

> > 2) Should R7RS-large require support for exact rational numbers?
>
> It should require exact ratios.  It should not require an
> implementation to exhaust all memory and crash in an attempt
> to represent a very precise ratio.

Ditto.

> > 3) Should R7RS-large require support for exact complex numbers?
>
> Previously I voted 'yes' subject to the same representation limits
> as other exact numbers.  But as I consider this there's an issue.
>
> I would vote 'yes' for consistency with the rest of the numeric
> tower, but it is hard to say exactly what a 'yes' here means in
> the absence of any constraint on whether the exact numbers
> represented are, eg, stored in polar or cartesian format, or in
> some union that could be either, and if in polar format whether
> the angle measurement is given in radians (either directly or as
> some product of pi like degrees), or as a slope ratio.

I have difficulty imagining the usefulness of "exact" polar
representation. Seems to me, if you do allow exact complex
numbers, for polar<->cartesian conversion you would need
big-floats.

But must admit I am unclear about what "target audience or
market" R7RS-large is being designed for. I use it to solve
practical problems or for exploratory programming, in place of
perl/python/ruby/language-du-jour :-)

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