int/long unification hides bugs

[kartik]

Andrew Dalke <adalke at mindspring.com> wrote in message news:<X8mfd.2724$kM.1512 at newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
> 
> Real code?  Here's one used for generating the canonical
> SMILES representation of a chemical compound.  It comes
> from the FROWNS package.
> 
>              try:
>                  val = 1
>                  for offset, bondtype in offsets[index]:
>                      val *= symclasses[offset] * bondtype
>              except OverflowError:
>                  # Hmm, how often does this occur?
>                  val = 1L
>                  for offset, bondtype in offsets[index]:
>                      val *= symclasses[offset] * bondtype
> 
> 
> The algorithm uses the fundamental theorem of arithmetic
> as part of computing a unique characteristic value for
> every atom in the molecule, up to symmetry.
> 
> It's an iterative algorithm, and the new value for
> a given atom is the product of the old values of its
> neighbor atoms in the graph:
> 
>     V'(atom1) = V(atom1.neighbor[0]) * V(atom1.neighbor[1]) * ...
> 
> In very rare cases this can overflow 32 bits.  Rare
> enough that it's faster to do everything using 32 bit
> numbers and just redo the full calculation if there's
> an overflow.
> 
> Because Python now no longer gives this overflow error,
> we have the advantage of both performance and simplified
> code.
> 
> Relatively speaking, 2**31 is tiny.  My little laptop
> can count that high in Python in about 7 minutes, and
> my hard drive has about 2**35 bits of space.  I deal
> with single files bigger than 2**32 bits.
> 
> Why then should I have to put in all sorts of workarounds
> into *my* code because *you* don't know how to write
> good code, useful test cases, and appropriate internal
> sanity checks?

Thank you for the info.
-kartik