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Taylor Campbell <campbell@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > The notion of 'fixnum' and 'flonum' is an implementation detail; it > should really not be exposed to the user, as this simply shows a > weakness in the expressiveness of the language. What is needed, > though, is a method of specifying modular or inexact arithmetic more > precisely than the vague fixnum and flonum mechanism. This is why I sugggest that most users want some guaranteed space-constant functions. So we can provide them. Not a problem. Space constant addition of integers, when overflow occurs, could result in various things: modular "wraparond", special NaN values, throwing errors, clamping to maxint. All of those are sensible; there is no clear reason why the modular wraparound is best; indeed, it is usually worst. This is why I suggest optional or default arguments to such functions to specify this behavior. The IEEE floating point experts can presumably explain what the right options to provide are for space-constant operations on reals. Thomas