[m-dev.] remaining design issues for new integer types

[Julien Fischer]

Hi all,

There were a few left-over issues from the discussion about the
the new integer types last October.
See: 
<http://lists.mercurylang.org/archives/developers/2016-October/016639.html>

In particular, the last three points:

     4. poly_type and format.

     * Should string.poly_type include an alternative for uints and
     be supported by io.format etc?
     * What about the fixed size integers?

     5. Reverse modes of arithmetic operations.

     The int module currently provides reverse modes for operations like (+).
     uint currently doesn't, should it?  (We don't currently provide them for
     arbitrary precision integers either.)

     6. What type should the second operand of the left and right shift operations
     be?

     Should it be:

           uint >> uint = uint    (as in Peter's version of the uint module)
           uint >> int = uint     (as in my inttypes library)

     (The justification for the latter in the inttypes library was that we didn't have
     literals for the various types.)

(4) and (5) aren't so important for the moment, but (6) is.  Preferences?

Julien.