Re: Numeric literals, take 1

On Thursday, November 14, 2002, at 11:58  AM, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:
>> =section * Caveats when using BigNum/BigRats
>>
>> All literal numbers are interepreted at compile-time,
>> before there is any information available about the type
>> of the variable that will store them.
>
> Hmm.  In your example,
>
>>  my BigInt $i = 777_666_555_444_333_222_111;
>
> perl has already read the text "BigInt" by the time it's gotten to the
> number, so it has some idea of what type of thing the numeric literal
> should be.  Besides, what I think should happen is that perl should
> auto-adjust the type as it reads so that these are equivalent:
>
> 	my BigInt	$i = 777_666_555_444_333_222_111;
> 	my 		$i = 777_666_555_444_333_222_111;


In previous postings, Larry has said he hopes that there will be no 
"BigInt" and "BigNum" types: there will simply be "Int" and "Num", 
which will know to represent themselves in Big* form when necessary.


MikeL