Version 0.10 of Math::Prime::FastSieve

I've uploaded a new version of Math::Prime::FastSieve: v0.10.

This version is still based on Inline::CPP.  At some future point I
may use InlineX::CPP2XS to remove the Inline::CPP dependency, but for
now I like it how it is.

Here are the most significant changes:

- Implemented an END{ Inline->init(); } block to prevent M54 warnings.
  (Rob's suggestion).

- Increment inner 'j' loops at +=2 instead of just ++ ( 20-30% performance
  improvement for primes(), and even better for the OO constructor.
  (Dana's suggestion)

- EXPERIMENTAL support for long int data type.  Perls built with long int
  support are now able to go past the 2.14 billion limitation imposed by
  standard ints.  However, I haven't tested on a 32 bit Perl, so it may not
  fare well in smoke testing.  If the smoke tests start throwing up FAILs, I
  will roll back the change, and possibly re-implement it behind
  preprocessor guards. (Longs were another of Dana's suggestions).

- TO-DO:  Dana also suggested trimming the sieve size in half by eliminating
  evens from it.  We're already NOT spending time iterating over evens, but
  to keep the algorithm's math simple, a sieve of 1 .. 100000 has 100000 bits.
  As Dana pointed out, it could contain just 50000 bits representing odd
  integers, thereby saving some memory.

  I may implement that later on, but
  I think in the past I benchmarked it and found the math to be more
  expensive.  More work needs to be done there to work out the details of a
  computationally cheap means of cutting the sieve's memory footprint
  in half.


One other note: Perl SV's support an 'unsigned' data type, and my
functions mostly work with unsigned longs internally.  They even
specify unsigned longs as return type in some cases.  However,
whenever I try to specify unsigned long as a parameter type,
compilation fails.  I think it may be an Inline::C or Inline::CPP
issue, either in the grammar parsing or in the typemaps.

Dave

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David Oswald
[email protected]