NAME
Math::GMP - High speed arbitrary size integer math
SYNOPSIS
use Math::GMP;
my $n = new Math::GMP 2;
$n = $n ** (256*1024);
$n = $n - 1;
print "n is now $n\n";
DESCRIPTION
Math::GMP is designed to be a drop-in replacement both for
Math::BigInt and for regular integer arithmetic. Unlike BigInt,
though, Math::GMP uses the GNU gmp library for all of its
calculations, as opposed to straight Perl functions. This
results in a speed increase of anywhere from 5 to 30 times. The
downside is that this module requires a C compiler to install --
a small tradeoff in most cases.
A Math::GMP object can be used just as a normal numeric scalar
would be -- the module overloads the normal arithmetic operators
to provide as seamless an interface as possible. However, if you
need a perfect interface, you can do the following:
use Math::GMP qw(:constant);
$n = 2 ** (256 * 1024);
print "n is $n\n";
This would fail without the ':constant' since Perl would use
normal doubles to compute the 250,000 bit number, and thereby
overflow it into meaninglessness (smaller exponents yield less
accurate data due to floating point rounding).
BUGS
As of version 1.0, Math::GMP is mostly compatible with
Math::BigInt. There are some slight incompatibilities, such as
output of positive numbers not being prefixed by a '+' sign.
This is intentional.
The install process of the gmp library is rather contrived. This
needs fixing and testing on various platforms.
AUTHOR
Chip Turner <
[email protected]>, based on Math::BigInt by Mark Biggar
and Ilya Zakharevich.
