[swift-evolution] Pre-proposal: Safer Decimal Calculations

[Rainer Brockerhoff]

On 3/18/16 21:00, Dany St-Amant via swift-evolution wrote:
> 
>> Le 18 mars 2016 à 18:42, Rainer Brockerhoff via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> a écrit :
>>
>> First draft towards a tentative pre-proposal:
>> https://gist.github.com/rbrockerhoff/6874a5698bb479886e83
>> ------
>>
>> I propose, therefore, an internal data layout like this:
>>
>> UInt16 - position of the “virtual” point, starting at 0
>> UInt16 - data array size - 1
>> [Int32] - contiguous data array, little-endian order, grown as needed.
>> Note that both UInt16 fields being zero implies that the number is
>> reduced to a 32-bit Integer. Number literals in Swift can be up to 2048
>> bits in size, so the maximum data array size would be 64, although it
>> could conceivably grow beyond that. The usual cases of the virtual point
>> position being 0 or 2 could be aggressively optimized for normal
>> arithmetic operators.
> 
> By using a table of signed Int32, I think you'll lose one bit every time the number is extended.
> Should the sign of the number be hidden in the data array size, either as the sign or as the lsb?
> - second field = (data array size - 1) << 1 | (negative ? 1 : 0)

Hm. I didn't really mean that the sign should be repeated in every
element, so technically it should be [UInt32] with a note saying
negative numbers are stored in 2's complement.

-- 
Rainer Brockerhoff  <rainer at brockerhoff.net>
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
"In the affairs of others even fools are wise
In their own business even sages err."
http://brockerhoff.net/blog/