Re: bignum incompatible with looks_like_number() ???

Here's what I found out after digging into this issue:

1. bignum is intended to be fully compatible with looks_like_number()
and with all other arithmetical functions and operators.

2. If you try, for example,
$x = 2**512 + 0.1;
and you get an overflow or similar error, then inserting the single line:
use bignum;
into your Perl program should automagically extend the precision of all
calculations to whatever they need to be to get a useful result. In
keeping with the Perl philosophy, there are no arbitrary Perl-imposed
limits on how far you can take this --- you can go as far as memory and
other external constraints permit.

3. These statements apply to Perl 5 (there's a similar capability is in
Perl 6, but I believe it's invoked differently).

4. These statements fairly represent the _intent_ of the developers of
Bignum and its friends BigInt and BigFloat. There are, however, several
problem cases and boundary issues associated with overloading operators
like + and / and things like initialization constants. The situation
with XIRR that I described in my original post was such a case ---
is_a_number() incorrectly failed when it was called on an integer under
use bignum;

However, running exactly the same code under newer versions of certain
modules made the original problem go away.

5. If you decide to try
use bignum;
and it fails, you will be doing your fellow Perl users a good deed by
investigating the problem and helping the developers fix it.

CB

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