Re: more on BOGUS-FIXNUMS

[Jeff Dalton <jeff%aiai.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>]

> Date: Tue, 19 Jul 88 17:51 EDT
> From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@arpa.scrc-stony-brook>

> I'd like to see a full blown proposal based around #7.

It might be interesting to see one, but #7 has small-integers, which have
at least a certain size but may be inefficient, and fixnums, which are
efficient (if anything is) but may have (or not have) any size.  I am not
sure why anyone would want to use these small integers rather than specify
exactly what range/size they want.  Are we supposed to imagine they might
very well be efficient just as fixnums might very well be a reasonable
size?  The only definite advantage to small integers is that they're
portable, but they're portable in a sense I'm not sure anyone cares about.
A definite disadvantage, however, is to create confusion between fixnums
and small integers, and also confusion between these small integers and
what some Lisps have called small integers, namely the ones represented
"directly by pointers".