Warp wrote:
>   Why is that relevant?  There are no programming languages which can handle
> the entire set of integers.

Again:
But yes, what happens when you exceed what the machine can handle is 
*exactly* what we're talking about here. C does a well-defined but 
surprising-to-the-naive method for dealing with integers too large.

Programming languages that natively handle unbounded integers don't 
distinguish between signed and unsigned integers, because people don't 
program down to the last bit of an integer. Hence, there's no need to 
define what happens when you combine an unsigned integer that won't fit 
in a signed integer's value range with a signed integer.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

Post a reply to this message