On 2/13/07, Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> In the particular case of CRE exponents, I am not sure. There are
> unlikely to be many practical applications of exponents > 2^31,
Bug reports which seem to be related to fixnum overflow are
evidence of such applications, I believe.
If changing f+ to + fixes some bugs, then it is well worth doing,
even at the cost of some speed penalty. I'm not convinced by the
"original intent" argument here. The factorization code is well-nigh
impenetrable as it stands; I don't see the substitution f+ --> +
making much difference.
All the best
Robert