Raymond writes:
> I think we should just get rid of the f+, f-, f* macros/functions.
> Well, actually redefine them so they don't assert that the operands
> and results are fixnums.
That is just what I am thinking, and in the course of my code cleanup
action I'm also replacing all these fixnum specific macros by the
generic operation.
> Perhaps things will run a little slower, but machines are hundreds
> (thousands?) of times faster now than when maxima was originally
> written.
Yes, so far I have seen no problem by eliminating those macros and I
hope this will make the code more robust. And sbcl - by the way - is also
often capable of finding out if fixnum arithmetic will be safe without
declarations; especially when they are misleading.
Asking the user if he really wants to do a calculation if certain limits
are reached might nevertheless be a good option as Richard suggested.
'Andreas