From: Harry Ohlsen <harryo@...>
Date: 2001-08-04T12:48:34+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19102] Re: Endianness and integer indexing


> For those wondering why I did this, here is a mod_exp routine
> for calculating z**n % q for very large numbers such as are used
> in public key encryption:

Sorry, I can't answer your question, but thanks for the code.  I was 
literally just about to write the same thing!

I've just written a class to do arithmetic modulo N and exponentiation was 
the last thing I needed to make it complete for my purposes.

I'm currently doing a number theory course at uni and decided it was a good 
opportunity to write some Ruby code to help me test my calculations.

I love the way I can use a simple global substitution to change all of the 
integers in a string into "ring.element(...)" then use eval and have 
everything just work, saving me writing a parser for arithmetic expressions.

I would think that grabbing a bit from a number would be coded to work 
irrespective of architecture, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to have that 
operation available, since Ruby is so cross-platform compatible in every 
other respect.