Re: Using the GNU GMP Library for Bignums in Emacs

[Paul Eggert]

Richard Stallman wrote:
> I expect that %x is used only for values meant to interact
> with the operating system in certain ways

Hexadecimal is used for many other purposes. For example, the shell command 'git 
log' at the top level of Emacs currently outputs a first line containing the 
hexadecimal string bca6c4348077c8c0b368503b16378867b6d49659 which represents an 
integer containing 160 bits, the integer width of the SHA-1 checksums used by 
Git. Although Emacs cannot now process such a number directly, with bignums it 
will be able to and %x is the natural way to format such numbers.