Large exponents don't work correctly (integers don't promote to decimal)

[andy.elvey@…]

I'm using Orca v0.0.24 on Fedora Core 5. I've found that large exponents don't work correctly. If you do (say) 2 ** 4, the answer is correct (16). But when large exponents are tried, the answers are incorrect. A sample session is shown below.

ORCA 0.0.24 (May 23 2006)
O> 5 ** 40
== -1413876383
O> 2 ** 4
== 16
O> 2 ** 100
== 0
O> 2 ** 30
== 1073741824
O> 2 ** 35
== 0
O>

[krobillard]

Unlike Rebol, Orca does not promote integers to decimals. If you run those examples with at least one of the values as decimal they will return the correct results.

I changed this issue from a bug to an enhancement. If enough users want Rebol behavior we can change this, though I prefer the current behavior which is simpler to implement. There have been times when auto-promotion to another datatype has caught me unaware and I was forced to add 'to-int to convert back for correct results.