RFC 6910473: BigInteger negative bit length, value range, and future prospects

[Brian Burkhalter]

I have reviewed this proposed change a couple of times in its current form and it looks good to me.

It would be good to see some comments about the general concept from BigInt cognoscenti, and from (a) Reviewer(s) as concerns the @implNote addition as well as the new ArithmeticExceptions added at several points in the javadoc. With respect to these latter, in the event the patch were to be approved, would a CCC request be in order?

Brian

On Oct 1, 2013, at 7:50 PM, cowwoc wrote:

> Sounds good. Thanks for the clarification.
> 
> Gili
> 
> On 01/10/2013 9:25 PM, Dmitry Nadezhin wrote:
>> I see that I misused the word "to clamp" in this discussion.
>> I guess that addition with "clumping" means:
>> return x + y < MIN_VALUE ? MIN_VALUE : x + y > MAX_VALUE ? MAX_VALUE : x +
>> y;
>> 
>> The patch actually throws ArithmeticException on overflow:
>> if (x + y < MIN_VALUE || x + y > MAX_VALUE) throw new ArithmetiException();
>> else return x + y;
>> 
>> The word "clamp" appeared in the discussion only.
>> Comments in the patch don't contain it. They say:
>> 
>> BigInteger constructors and operations throw {@code
>> ArithmeticException} whenthe result is out of the supported range.
>> 
>> On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 11:45 PM, cowwoc <cowwoc at bbs.darktech.org> wrote:
>> 
>>>     I prefer throwing exceptions on unusual conditions (e.g. overflow) and
>>> letting the user clamp the value if they so wish. Clamping will lead to
>>> unexpected behavior once values fall outside this range. Yes, it will be
>>> documented, but I daresay most applications won't ever check for it and
>>> produce incorrect results as a consequence.
>>> 
>>> Gili
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 01/10/2013 2:19 PM, Dmitry Nadezhin wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Dear BigInteger experts,
>>>> Do you have comments to my previous message ?
>>>> http://mail.openjdk.java.net/**pipermail/core-libs-dev/2013-**
>>>> September/021264.html<http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/core-libs-dev/2013-September/021264.html>