Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.
Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
Why is GHC’s Int type not guaranteed to use exactly 32 bits of precision? This document claim it has at least 30-bit signed precision. Is it somehow related to fitting Maybe Int or similar into 32-bits?
It is to allow implementations of Haskell that use tagging. When using tagging you need a few bits as tags (at least one, two is better). I’m not sure there currently are any such implementations, but I seem to remember Yale Haskell used it.
Tagging can somewhat avoid the disadvantages of boxing, since you no longer have to box everything; instead the tag bit will tell you if it’s evaluated etc.