Re: Fix limitations on vector length

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: Roland Orre <address@hidden>
   Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 15:32:54 +0200 (MET DST)

   Some of our code using multidimensional arrays behaved buggy and that
   showed to be caused by the limitations of vector lengths to 24 bits,
   we need at least a few bits more at the moment.

this limitation should be documented.  (there is mention of string limit
of 2^24 characters (shared implementation), but not for vectors.)

   Problems:
   1) the allocation of the array did not cause an error message.
   2) we need an urgent simple fix for utilizing big arrays.

   What we inted to do is to change the SCM_LENGTH macro and the
   memory allocation for vectors and arrays so when the length
   need more than 24 bits the length is stored in the beginning
   of the array memory, that is we add an offset of four to the
   base pointer.

   Any comments?

did you go through with this plan?  could you supply a diff?  does this
modified guile run on 64 bit machines (alpha, sparc v9)?  any problems
there?

thi