Hrvoje> SL Baur <steve(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes: Hrvoje> I don't understand this distinction. Obviously, 31(63)-bit integers Hrvoje> are the most we can do with the fixnums. To support larger numbers, Hrvoje> we need a) a library of routines to deal with the numbers, and b) the Hrvoje> changes in Emacs Lisp to support them. There are two basic approaches to supporting bignums in Elisp: a) Add them as another datatype comletely separate from Elisp fixnums, with explicit coercions back and forth. This, I believe, is possible with minimal changes to the Elisp machine, even though it's still a sufficiently hairy job, 'cause you need to interface with the garbage collector in a suitable way. b) Unify fixnums and bignums so that the difference is no longer visible from Elisp, i.e. with automatic conversions back and forth and so on. This is a much more involved change, because all arithmetic operations need to be changed, parsing/unparsing of literals needs to be reimplemented and so on and on. This (hate to say it ...) may be better left to a new Lisp engine. On the other hand, (a) may be entirely sufficient to implement crypto stuff. -- Cheers =8-} Chipsy Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla