[Rd] How to handle INT8 data

[Jeroen Ooms]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 6:09 PM, Murray Stokely <murray at stokely.org> wrote:
> The lack of 64 bit integer support causes lots of problems when dealing
> with certain types of data where the loss of precision from coercing to 53
> bits with double is unacceptable.
>
> Two packages were developed to deal with this:  int64 and bit64.

Don't forget packages for large arbitrary large numbers such as Rmpfr
and openssl.

  x <- openssl::bignum("12345678987654321")
  x^10

The risk of storing int64 as a double (e.g. in bit64) is that it might
easily be mistaken for a completely different value via unclass() or
Rf_isNumeric() or so.