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

["Creede Lambard (Volt Computer)" <a-creela@microsoft.com>]

Yeah, I tried using Math::BigFloat to compute pi on the supposition that it
would work more or less like Math::BigInt, which seemed to work pretty well
for me. (I managed to print out Fibonacci numbers up through about 200
digits, which I would say is pretty good.) My primary reaction is
"pffffffft." For a long time I couldn't get it to work, and then when I
finally wrote a program it parsed it spit out a message about "undefined
subroutine Math::BigFloat::panic". So I gave up then and went back to doing
something else irrational, like working on Outlook Express. :)

I suppose you could try using a 2000-digit integer and Math::BigInt to
compute the value of pi * 10^2000, give or take a ^, but that's a project
for a different day. Assuming it would work at all, of course.

-- Creede 

> 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.
> 

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