[Python-Dev] Memory size overflows

[Michael Hudson]

Greg Ewing <greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:

> Tim Peters <tim.one@comcast.net>:
> 
> > I'll repeat that it's hard to do this correctly and quickly (c.f. earlier
> > comments about the history of Python's subtly buggy attempts).
> 
> The really tragic thing about all this is that most
> machines have perfectly good facilities for detecting
> overflow at the machine level, but no commonly used
> HLL that I know of provides access to them, for some 
> unfathomable reason.

Well, if we go that route we can do floating point properly too.

An impression I've got is that because noone actually uses the
overflow detection stuff, chip designers are placing less empahasis on
implementing them efficiently.  A particularly unpleasant circle :-(

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  If comp.lang.lisp *is* what vendors are relying on to make or 
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  effect of any one of us on such a flimsy marketing strategy...
                                      -- Kent M Pitman, comp.lang.lisp