Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by PhunkyPhil 691 days ago
Why not? Whether you're running python code in your C interpreter or just running C code, the same memory restrictions will apply based on your hardware. CPython doesn't place a lower bound on bignums over a non-C based implementation

EDIT: See the GMP library, which states "There is no practical limit to the precision except the ones implied by the available memory in the machine GMP runs on"[0]

https://gmplib.org/#WHAT
1 comments
osmarks 690 days ago
The C specification limits programs to addressing a finite amount of memory, though it can be made arbitrarily large by an implementation. The Python specifications do not imply this though real interpreters do.
link
PhunkyPhil 690 days ago
> though it can be made arbitrarily large by an implementation

Yes, this is my entire point

Why should I care what the language specification states in a computability theory discussion? There only needs to exist a method to accomplish our goal-Whether the method conforms to specification or not doesn't seem relevant to me.

link