Best way to create Bignum from C extension

I've been hand-translating some Ruby code into C for an extension and have come across the need to create and return a Bignum from the extension. I see that there is a macro INT2NUM that will produce a Bignum from long or long long, but what is the best way to create an arbitrarily sized Bignum from a byte array packed as:

[a, b, c] -> (a * (256 ** 0)) + (b * (256 ** 1)) + (c * (256 ** 2))

in other words, reversing the array and flatting it would produce the correct binary representation of the number.

I tried creating a Fixnum with INT2FIX(0) and then using rb_funcalls to incrementally construct a Bignum, but that approach 1) didn't seem to work past WORD sized numbers and 2) seems like it would be awfully slow.

···

--
Tom Preston-Werner

* Libraries:
    Chronic (chronic.rubyforge.org)
    God (god.rubyforge.org)
    Fuzed (fuzed.rubyforge.org)
* Site:
    rubyisawesome.com

dumb question probably, but could you use scientific notation style
numbers; i.e., 1.076 * 10^10? You'd return a base as a float and an
exponent as a fixnum, and then you could calculate it on the fly...

···

On Sep 25, 1:32 pm, Tom Werner <pub...@rubyisawesome.com> wrote:

I've been hand-translating some Ruby code into C for an extension and
have come across the need to create and return a Bignum from the
extension. I see that there is a macro INT2NUM that will produce a
Bignum from long or long long, but what is the best way to create an
arbitrarily sized Bignum from a byte array packed as:

[a, b, c] -> (a * (256 ** 0)) + (b * (256 ** 1)) + (c * (256 ** 2))

in other words, reversing the array and flatting it would produce the
correct binary representation of the number.

I tried creating a Fixnum with INT2FIX(0) and then using rb_funcalls to
incrementally construct a Bignum, but that approach 1) didn't seem to
work past WORD sized numbers and 2) seems like it would be awfully slow.

--
Tom Preston-Werner

* Libraries:
    Chronic (chronic.rubyforge.org)
    God (god.rubyforge.org)
    Fuzed (fuzed.rubyforge.org)
* Site:
    rubyisawesome.com

Take a look at the rb_big_* functions declared in intern.h. I think you
can work something out using them.

Paul

···

On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 02:32:08AM +0900, Tom Werner wrote:

I've been hand-translating some Ruby code into C for an extension and
have come across the need to create and return a Bignum from the
extension. I see that there is a macro INT2NUM that will produce a
Bignum from long or long long, but what is the best way to create an
arbitrarily sized Bignum from a byte array packed as:

[a, b, c] -> (a * (256 ** 0)) + (b * (256 ** 1)) + (c * (256 ** 2))

in other words, reversing the array and flatting it would produce the
correct binary representation of the number.

I tried creating a Fixnum with INT2FIX(0) and then using rb_funcalls to
incrementally construct a Bignum, but that approach 1) didn't seem to
work past WORD sized numbers and 2) seems like it would be awfully slow.

Tom M wrote:

···

On Sep 25, 1:32 pm, Tom Werner <pub...@rubyisawesome.com> wrote:
  

I've been hand-translating some Ruby code into C for an extension and
have come across the need to create and return a Bignum from the
extension. I see that there is a macro INT2NUM that will produce a
Bignum from long or long long, but what is the best way to create an
arbitrarily sized Bignum from a byte array packed as:

[a, b, c] -> (a * (256 ** 0)) + (b * (256 ** 1)) + (c * (256 ** 2))

in other words, reversing the array and flatting it would produce the
correct binary representation of the number.

I tried creating a Fixnum with INT2FIX(0) and then using rb_funcalls to
incrementally construct a Bignum, but that approach 1) didn't seem to
work past WORD sized numbers and 2) seems like it would be awfully slow.

--
Tom Preston-Werner

* Libraries:
    Chronic (chronic.rubyforge.org)
    God (god.rubyforge.org)
    Fuzed (fuzed.rubyforge.org)
* Site:
    rubyisawesome.com
    
dumb question probably, but could you use scientific notation style
numbers; i.e., 1.076 * 10^10? You'd return a base as a float and an
exponent as a fixnum, and then you could calculate it on the fly...

No, the reason I need to do this is to read in Erlang's packed data representation. Interestingly enough, that *is* how Erlang transmits floats!

--
Tom Preston-Werner

* Libraries:
    Chronic (chronic.rubyforge.org)
    God (god.rubyforge.org)
    Fuzed (fuzed.rubyforge.org)
* Site:
    rubyisawesome.com

something like breaking up the string into substrings and then calling
unpack on each substring, then reassemling... think 'get_more_digits'
since you're already inclined towards Erlang...

···

On Sep 26, 2:49 pm, Tom Werner <pub...@rubyisawesome.com> wrote:

Tom M wrote:
> On Sep 25, 1:32 pm, Tom Werner <pub...@rubyisawesome.com> wrote:

>> I've been hand-translating some Ruby code into C for an extension and
>> have come across the need to create and return a Bignum from the
>> extension. I see that there is a macro INT2NUM that will produce a
>> Bignum from long or long long, but what is the best way to create an
>> arbitrarily sized Bignum from a byte array packed as:

>> [a, b, c] -> (a * (256 ** 0)) + (b * (256 ** 1)) + (c * (256 ** 2))

>> in other words, reversing the array and flatting it would produce the
>> correct binary representation of the number.

>> I tried creating a Fixnum with INT2FIX(0) and then using rb_funcalls to
>> incrementally construct a Bignum, but that approach 1) didn't seem to
>> work past WORD sized numbers and 2) seems like it would be awfully slow.

>> --
>> Tom Preston-Werner

>> * Libraries:
>> Chronic (chronic.rubyforge.org)
>> God (god.rubyforge.org)
>> Fuzed (fuzed.rubyforge.org)
>> * Site:
>> rubyisawesome.com

> dumb question probably, but could you use scientific notation style
> numbers; i.e., 1.076 * 10^10? You'd return a base as a float and an
> exponent as a fixnum, and then you could calculate it on the fly...

No, the reason I need to do this is to read in Erlang's packed data
representation. Interestingly enough, that *is* how Erlang transmits floats!

--
Tom Preston-Werner

* Libraries:
    Chronic (chronic.rubyforge.org)
    God (god.rubyforge.org)
    Fuzed (fuzed.rubyforge.org)
* Site:
    rubyisawesome.com