[Rd] 64bit integers

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 25 January 2025 at 10:08, Tony Wilkes wrote:
| I heard somewhere that Core R is developing the implementation of true 64bit integers.

Would you have a source reference for that claim?

| Is this true? If so, may I know what the status is of this development, and when, approximately, one can expect 64bit integers to be available in R?

Luke Tierney may chime in, the last official word I heard based on a
recent-ish talk of his (for which I cannot find a reference now, may have
been one of the UseR! conference in last few years if memory serves) was 'yes
to more work on large integer values via double storage (up to 53 bits) but
no to a formal new type'.

There are hard limits to number of available 'bits' in the SEXP header making
it very 'costly' to add new types. That makes R Core _very_ reluctant to do
so (my reading, not putting words in anybody's mouth).

I too would like to have support for uint64_t. We do have the added-on and
mostly-working `integer64` in a `double` payload. One could conceivably
double up that work and add a `unsigned_integer64` but that seems like a lot
of work / could create a risk of muddling up what integer64 support we have.

Dirk

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