Re: Perl and cryptography (was Re: [MacPerl] Speaking of Pi)

["Paul J. Schinder" <schinder@pobox.com>]

On 13 Aug 1999 22:24:21 -0700, john s jacobs anderson wrote:
>
>> Is this relevant to MacPerl? Well, yes, partly just in the sense of 
>> helping us all learn more about [Mac]Perl's power and what we can do 
>> with it. But also there are some very handy things to do with 
>> properly marshalled irrational numbers, and pi is a nice place to 
>> start. Of course, there are languages optimized for mathematical 
>> operations, and Matthias' reminder of the chosen arithmetic precision 
>> limit of most microprocessors must be considered. I doubt Perl would 
>> ever be used for something like cryptography, but there might be some 
>> other serious applications.
>
>Not ObMacPerl, but ObPerl: 
>
>In Neal Stephenson's recent (and highly recommended) _Cryptonomicon_,
>a cryptographic Perl script plays a role in the plot. Source code *is*
>provided. 8^)=

And there are plenty of Crypt:: modules in CPAN, although a lot are front
ends to C code. But just because native types on a processor are a fixed
size doesn't mean you are stuck using those sizes. Techniques for doing
arbitrary precision arithmetic are well known, There's a not very well
regarded one for Perl that I believe comes with the core, named something
like Big::Float and Big::Int. Most Unix boxes I've used come with bc, an
arbitrary precision calculator.

>
>john.
>
>-- 
>-------------------------------------------------------------------
>John S Jacobs Anderson                         jacobs@azstarnet.com
>http://www.treefort.org/~jacobs/ <-- GeneHack:bioinfo*linux*opinion
>
>
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-------
Paul J. Schinder
schinder@pobox.com


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