Big Numbers for Constants

[gingerBill]

In this language, I want constants to work very similar to how they work in Go. This requires the need for a big numbers library as it needs arbitrary precision for numbers to behaviour as numbers.

NUM_A :: 1<<100;
NUM_B :: NUM_A>>90;

Should be valid and result in NUM_B == 1<<10.

Blog article on how Go constants work: https://blog.golang.org/constants

[ratchetfreak]

BigNum as a language feature is going to need RAII semantics (destructors and copy/move semantics). As just about all standard implementations will allocate auxiliary memory that needs to be cleaned up.

Though if you just want something that works for compile-time constant folding then something like gmp (licenced under LGPL v3) would work. It does both integer and floating point math.

[gingerBill]

Sorry for the confusion but I do not want this to be a run time feature but rather a compile time feature for the constant system. I want numbers to just work as number.

gmp might be a good option so I might have to consider it.

[Kelimion]

http://www.libtom.net/LibTomMath/ is also a good alternative. Dual licensed as public domain / WTFPL.

[gingerBill]

This has been implemented with the new custom BigInt library. As the name suggests, only integers are supported, no BigFloat yet.