Thomas G. Lockhart wrote:

> btw, anyone know of a package for variable- and large-precision
> numerics? I have looked at the GNU gmp package, but it looks to me
> that it probably won't fit into the db backend without lots of
> overhead. Will probably try to use the int64 package in contrib
> for now...

You might check the long (infinite precision) int support in the python
distribution. It is all in one 32k C file in Objects/longobject.c

It would require a little untangling, but I think it is not too much.
As python is known to work on more platforms then postgreSQL, its 
long ints should as well ;)

you can get the distribution, about 2.5M, from www.python.org.

Another nice project would be to get python to act as a PL inside the
backend. Having it there in would probably get more python folk engaged 
with postgres and that in turn could help to get the word "Object" 
back into postgres. 

Currently it seems that most PG developers are die-hard database folks 
that see the OO features of postgres as a minor nuisance and something 
to get rid of "as they can easily be implemented (retrofitted) using 
other means" ;)

Hannu

Mon, 01 Jun 1998 11:18:22 +0300
Hannu Krosing <hannu@trust.ee>
Re: large-precision numeric support