1Copyright 1991, 1996, 1999, 2000, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 2 3This file is part of the GNU MP Library. 4 5The GNU MP Library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify 6it under the terms of either: 7 8 * the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free 9 Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your 10 option) any later version. 11 12or 13 14 * the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software 15 Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any 16 later version. 17 18or both in parallel, as here. 19 20The GNU MP Library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but 21WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY 22or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License 23for more details. 24 25You should have received copies of the GNU General Public License and the 26GNU Lesser General Public License along with the GNU MP Library. If not, 27see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/. 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 THE GNU MP LIBRARY 35 36 37GNU MP is a library for arbitrary precision arithmetic, operating on signed 38integers, rational numbers, and floating point numbers. It has a rich set of 39functions, and the functions have a regular interface. 40 41GNU MP is designed to be as fast as possible, both for small operands and huge 42operands. The speed is achieved by using fullwords as the basic arithmetic 43type, by using fast algorithms, with carefully optimized assembly code for the 44most common inner loops for lots of CPUs, and by a general emphasis on speed 45(instead of simplicity or elegance). 46 47GNU MP is believed to be faster than any other similar library. Its advantage 48increases with operand sizes for certain operations, since GNU MP in many 49cases has asymptotically faster algorithms. 50 51GNU MP is free software and may be freely copied on the terms contained in the 52files COPYING* (see the manual for information on which license(s) applies to 53which components of GNU MP). 54 55 56 57 OVERVIEW OF GNU MP 58 59There are five classes of functions in GNU MP. 60 61 1. Signed integer arithmetic functions (mpz). These functions are intended 62 to be easy to use, with their regular interface. The associated type is 63 `mpz_t'. 64 65 2. Rational arithmetic functions (mpq). For now, just a small set of 66 functions necessary for basic rational arithmetics. The associated type 67 is `mpq_t'. 68 69 3. Floating-point arithmetic functions (mpf). If the C type `double' 70 doesn't give enough precision for your application, declare your 71 variables as `mpf_t' instead, set the precision to any number desired, 72 and call the functions in the mpf class for the arithmetic operations. 73 74 4. Positive-integer, hard-to-use, very low overhead functions are in the 75 mpn class. No memory management is performed. The caller must ensure 76 enough space is available for the results. The set of functions is not 77 regular, nor is the calling interface. These functions accept input 78 arguments in the form of pairs consisting of a pointer to the least 79 significant word, and an integral size telling how many limbs (= words) 80 the pointer points to. 81 82 Almost all calculations, in the entire package, are made by calling these 83 low-level functions. 84 85 5. Berkeley MP compatible functions. 86 87 To use these functions, include the file "mp.h". You can test if you are 88 using the GNU version by testing if the symbol __GNU_MP__ is defined. 89 90For more information on how to use GNU MP, please refer to the documentation. 91It is composed from the file doc/gmp.texi, and can be displayed on the screen 92or printed. How to do that, as well how to build the library, is described in 93the INSTALL file in this directory. 94 95 96 97 REPORTING BUGS 98 99If you find a bug in the library, please make sure to tell us about it! 100 101You should first check the GNU MP web pages at https://gmplib.org/, under 102"Status of the current release". There will be patches for all known serious 103bugs there. 104 105Report bugs to gmp-bugs@gmplib.org. What information is needed in a useful bug 106report is described in the manual. The same address can be used for suggesting 107modifications and enhancements. 108 109 110 111 112---------------- 113Local variables: 114mode: text 115fill-column: 78 116End: 117