[bug #63587] [troff] set .R register to maximum representable integer

[Dave]

Follow-up Comment #7, bug #63587 (project groff):

[comment #6 comment #6:]
> When fixing it so that \n[.t] _really did_ return INT_MAX
> in a diversion, things started to go wrong.

So perhaps the fix is to insert the word "nearly" in the documentation before
the phrase "the largest representable integer." ;-)  Kinda joking, but also,
the exact value here doesn't really matter, right?  Absent any other mechanism
for discovering INT_MAX--as roff languages have been since forever--to the
roff coder there's no effective difference between "\n[.t] is the largest
representable integer" and "\n[.t] is a really big number."  As long as it's
always the _same_ really big number, the hack in comment #2 lets the roff
coder determine what that number is should they need to compare subsequent
\n[.t] interpolations against it.

> This appears to be a kludge covering some sins in integer
> arithmetic handling.

I don't know the nature of those sins, but they could be as benign as "doing
it 'right' makes these algorithms way more complicated than when using a
close-enough approximation."

> There is a miniature science to this.

Thanks for that link!


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