[plt-scheme] Bit manipulation in PLT Scheme

At Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:53:58 +0000, "Paulo J. Matos" wrote:
> > Chapter 12 of "Inside Mzscheme" suggests that the numbers handled by
> > fixnums and bignums are disjoint:
> >
> > http://download.plt-scheme.org/doc/301/html/insidemz/insidemz-Z-H-
> 12.html#node_chap_12
> >
> > It checks and does appear to do a scheme_bignum_normalize() which brings
> > bignums back to fixnum status if it can fit.
> >
> 
> "MzScheme supports integers of an arbitrary magnitude; when an integer
> cannot be represented as a fixnum (i.e., 30 or 62 bits plus a sign
> bit),..."
> 
> Does this mean that a fixnum length differs from 32 bit to 64 bit
> architecture?

Yes.

> How can I know when I have a 30 or 62 bit fixnum then?

There's no simple way to tell, currently.

Matthew