[R] Integer bit size and the modulus operator

[Prof Brian Ripley]

This is a double protection error in real_binary.  See the R-devel list 
for the details.  Now fixed.

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006, 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 ")}
> }
>
> 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
>>>
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>>
>>
>
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-- 
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)
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