Improve documentation of bignums

* etc/NEWS: Enhance the announcement of bignums.

* doc/lispref/numbers.texi (Integer Basics): Add a missing
period.  Reported by Basil L. Contovounesios <contovob@tcd.ie>.

diff --git a/doc/lispref/numbers.texi b/doc/lispref/numbers.texi
index bd633b77c359f2ace0c305646009bca7357f1063..37d2c316490ce285b6024ab92602fc712699030b 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/lispref/numbers.texi
+++ b/doc/lispref/numbers.texi
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ numbers have a fixed amount of precision.
   Integers in Emacs Lisp can have arbitrary precision.
 
   Under the hood, though, there are two kinds of integers: smaller
-ones, called @dfn{fixnums}, and larger ones, called @dfn{bignums}
+ones, called @dfn{fixnums}, and larger ones, called @dfn{bignums}.
 Some functions in Emacs only accept fixnums.  Also, while fixnums can
 always be compared for equality with @code{eq}, bignums require the
 use of @code{eql}.

diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index d1a68687944ec8b5cd93eeee6e356da75faeb557..a9f8ed2ef8a5c054b58c82ea2a08ce5be211a595 100644 (file)
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -858,9 +858,18 @@ otherwise, it returns nil.  'format-proper-list-p' is now an obsolete
 alias for the new function.
 
 +++
-** Emacs Lisp integers can be of arbitrary precision.  The new
-predicates 'bignump' and 'fixnump' can be used to distinguish between
-the types of integers.
+** Emacs Lisp integers can now be of arbitrary size.
+Emacs uses the GNU Multiple Precision (GMP) library to support
+integers whose size is too large to support natively.  The integers
+supported natively are known as "fixnums", while the larger ones are
+"bignums".  The new predicates 'bignump' and 'fixnump' can be used to
+distinguish between these two types of integers.
+
+All the arithmetic, comparison, and logical (a.k.a. "bitwise")
+operations where bignums make sense now support both fixnums and
+bignums.  However, note that unlike fixnums, bignums will not compare
+equal with 'eq', you must use 'eql' instead.  (Numerical comparison
+with '=' works on both, of course.)
 
 ** define-minor-mode automatically documents the meaning of ARG