Re: [Axiom-developer] RE: algebra Makefiles withexplicit dependencies, bootstrap, fixed-points etc.

[William Sit]

Let's not forget that 2^32 is over 4 billion.

William
--

Ralf Hemmecke wrote:
> 
> This sounds like forbidding
> 
> for i in 10^32 .. repeat ....
> 
> or do I misunderstand something?
> 
> Ralf
> 
> root wrote:
> > Steve,
> >
> > I don't know if there is an actual statement to the effect that
> > the upper bound on a loop would be a register-sized number (32
> > or 64 bits) but at 6Mhz it seemed impossible that one could
> > run a loop of any consequence for greater than 2^32 or 2^64
> > iterations. If you wanted to do that you'd have to do the
> > looping using some other construct. In general it is safe to
> > assume that the upper bound of the register size cannot be
> > exceeded. There is a practical performance difference to
> > be gained by using (declare (fixnum  as the compiler can,
> > in the best case, assign a register to the loop variable.
> >