From: Jamis Buck <jamis_buck@...>
Date: 2004-12-15T09:04:21+09:00
Subject: Re: 64-bit integers in Ruby/DL

On 08:47 Wed 15 Dec     , Florian Gross wrote:
> Jamis Buck wrote:
> 
> >Is there any way, without modifying Ruby/DL itself, to specify
> >a function that returns a 64-bit integer using Ruby/DL? And to pass
> >a 64-bit integer to a function?
> 
> As far as I know Ruby/DL does not yet work properly on 64 bit platforms. 
> The author plans to fix that, but didn't have the time to do it when I 
> last contacted him.
> 
> I think this would involve changes in lots of places because Ruby/DL 
> seems to be using one-byte type tokens and .pack() internally. However 
> if you want to use the native bit-width of the system you will need to 
> use "L_" instead of "L" and so on in the pack arguments. So I think this 
> would involve changing the semantics in quite a few code locations...

Well, I'm actually on a 32-bit system. But gcc supports a 64-bit
integer (long long), as does MSVC++.

It's not critical, but it would certainly be nice. For now, I'm just
using unsigned longs, which will lose the most significant 32 bits of
each return value. :(

- Jamis

-- 
Jamis Buck
jgb3@email.byu.edu
http://www.jamisbuck.org/jamis