I would also be really interested in this. I use GMP and I am pretty satisfied with it, but I think there are interesting things that could be done, like: - template-based constant-size operands whose size could be selected at compile time. This would eliminate dynamic allocation of memory, which is needless for certain use cases (i.e., I want a 256-bit integer behaving like native ints, or a float with strictly 512-bit mantissa, etc..), and open up room for further speed optimizations. With generic programming it may be possible to share a big chunk of the implementation between constant-size and variable-size types; - header-only library: if used with small operands, GMP can suffer some performance penalty related to function call overhead. Maybe it would be possible to minimize it using aggressive inlining? F. On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 6:18 AM, Scott McMurray wrote:

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At 1:00 AM +0200 5/27/09, Michiel Helvensteijn wrote:

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Perhaps Boost shouldn't reinvent the wheel? There's already an

open-source

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arbitrary precision arithmetic library: http://gmplib.org/

Which says: GMP is distributed under the GNU LGPL. This license makes the

2009/5/26 Marshall Clow : library

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free to use, share, and improve, and allows you to pass on the result. The license gives freedoms, but also sets firm restrictions on the use with non-free programs.

There are people using Boost for both free and non-free programs. It's my understanding that we (Boost) want to continue to support all of them.

Personally, I think Boost would be best served providing some sort of expression template wrapper into which different arbitrary-precision numbers could be plugged.

That would mean far less work to get something usable, as it could use the GMP implementation initially. Then a BSL version of the implementation could be developed incrementally, while non-floss users could license some implementation to use with the Boost interface. _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users