SRFI 60: Integers as Bits

by Aubrey Jaffer

status: final (2005-03-08)

keywords: Data Structure, Numbers

library name: integer-bits

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Abstract

Treating integers as two's-complement strings of bits is an arcane but important domain of computer science. It is used for:

• hashing;
• Galois-field[2] calculations of error-detecting and error-correcting codes;
• cryptography and ciphers;
• pseudo-random number generation;
• register-transfer-level modeling of digital logic designs;
• Fast-Fourier transforms;
• packing and unpacking numbers in persistant data structures;
• space-filling curves with applications to dimension reduction and sparse multi-dimensional database indexes; and
• generating approximate seed values for root-finders and transcendental function algorithms.