[Rd] [R] Integer bit size and the modulus operator (PR#8541)

[ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 murdoch at stats.uwo.ca wrote:
>
>> On 1/30/2006 1:39 PM, Ionut Florescu wrote:
>>> Thank you for the quick reply, I will look into the R packages.
>>> For crashing R try this:
>>> 
>>> generator.zp=function(x,p)
>>> {a=1:(p-1); b=x^a%%p;
>>> if(all(b[1:(p-2)]!=1)&&(b[p-1]==1)){return(x, " Good ")}
>>> else{return(x, " No Good, try another integer ")}
>>> }
>> 
>> Thanks, I can reproduce the crash using
>> 
>> for (x in 10:100) generator.zp(x, 41)
>> 
>> I'll see if I can track down what's going wrong.  By the way, you're not
>> supposed to use two arguments to return():  that's not supposed to be
>> allowed any more.  I'm somewhat surprised you don't get an error from
>> it.  But that's not the cause of the crash.
>
> You do get a warning, though.  It *is* allowed, see ?return.
>
> One error is the following in real_binary:
>
>    if (n1 > n2)
> 	copyMostAttrib(s1, ans);
>    else if (n1 == n2) {
> 	copyMostAttrib(s2, ans);
> 	copyMostAttrib(s1, ans);
>    }
>    else
> 	copyMostAttrib(s2, ans);
>
> Here ans is not PROTECTED.

I think this one was a consequence of the other one.  I did get a valgrind 
error from there, but it looks as if copyMostAttrib does the necessary 
protection, if ans has not already been damaged.

> The second is in the warning, which causes allocation when ans is not 
> protected.
>
> Fixed in R-devel and 2.2.1 patched.
>
>
>> Duncan Murdoch
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> This checks if element x is a generator of the group Z_p. If you try
>>> this function for p = 41 and x various increasing values eventually it
>>> will crash R. That is what I meant by random, at first I started x=2,3
>>> so on, when I got to 8, R crashed. Now apparently I can get to 15. When
>>> I tried again I got to 20.
>>> 
>>> Ionut Florescu
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>>>> On 1/30/2006 11:32 AM, Ionut Florescu wrote:
>>>>> I am a statistician and I come up to an interesting problem in
>>>>> cryptography. I would like to use R since there are some statistical
>>>>> procedures that I need to use.
>>>>> However, I run into a problem when using the modulus operator %%.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I am using R 2.2.1 and when I calculate modulus for large numbers
>>>>> (that I need with my problem) R gives me warnings. For instance if
>>>>> one does:
>>>>> a=1:40;
>>>>> 8^a %% 41
>>>>> one obtains zeros which is not possible since 8 to any power is not a
>>>>> multiple of 41.
>>>>> In addition when working with numbers larger that this and with the
>>>>> mod operator R crashes randomly.
>>>> 
>>>> Could you keep a record of the random crashes, and see if you can make
>>>> any of them repeatable?  R shouldn't crash.  If you can find a
>>>> repeatable way to make it crash, then that's a bug that needs to be
>>>> fixed.  (If it crashes at random it should still be fixed, but it's so
>>>> much harder to fix that it's unlikely to happen unless the cases are
>>>> ones that look likely to come up in normal situations.)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I believe this is because R stores large integers as real numbers
>>>>> thus there may be lack of accuracy when applying the modulus operator
>>>>> and converting back to integers.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So my question is this: Is it possible to increase the size of memory
>>>>> used for storing integers? Say from 32 bits to 512 bits (Typical size
>>>>> of integers in cryptography).
>>>> 
>>>> No, but there is at least one contributed package that does multiple
>>>> precision integer arithmetic.  I can't remember the name of it right
>>>> now, but Google should be able to find it for you...
>>>> 
>>>> Duncan Murdoch
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thank you, any help would be greatly appreciated.
>>>>> Ionut Florescu
>>>>> 
>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
>>>>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>>> 
>>>> 
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>> 
>> 
>
> -- 
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595