[Python-3000] C API for ints and strings

[Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk]

Dnia 09-09-2007, N o godzinie 21:27 -0400, Jim Jewett napisał(a):

> If python handled small ints itself, and only farmed out the "large"
> ones,

If GMP is used, it's definitely worth to have a non-GMP representation
for small integers, because GMP itself does not do it. A GMP integer
is represented by a pointer to digits, the allocated size, and the used
size multiplied by the sign; no special cases here.

(The fact that GMP does not do it is good for people who want to make
a super-compact representation themselves. GMP optimization for the same
case would be wasted. It requires some work for implementing overflow
detection, but it yields a very good final result.)

The major technical problem with GMP is that an out of memory condition
during computation is a fatal error, GMP does not provide a way to
recover from it.

-- 
   __("<         Marcin Kowalczyk
   \__/       qrczak at knm.org.pl
    ^^     http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/