From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2000-02-16T08:36:37+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:01410] Re: Bignum aset

Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:01403] Re: Bignum aset"
    on 00/02/15, Dave Thomas <Dave@thomases.com> writes:

|> Yes, I heard it is deliberate.  An instance of Numeric is a unique
|> object corresponding to a numeric. And, []= is usually a destructive
|> method.

|I thought that only Fixnums were immediate.

Yes, Fixnums are only immdiate numeric.

|Won't happen with Fixnums, but it seems OK to be able to do it with
|Bignums.

Possible, regarding implementation.
But in Ruby, there's no overwrap between Fixnums and Bignums (on
purpose), so that

  1073741823[2] = 1  # error! Fixnum
  1073741824[2] = 1  # ok! Bignum

would be confusing.  I think we should introduce BitArray or something
for that purpose.
							matz.