`expt` doesn't seem to deal with large fixnum exponents

[jpellegrini]

expt doesn't seem to deal with certain exponents well:

stklos> (expt 2 1000000000000000000)
Floating point exception   stklos

The exponent is a fixnum, but too large...

[jpellegrini]

Maybe the libgc API has something that can be used to determine if we will have enough memory? But this may be too much of a wish, I suppose... Some other Schemes also crash in teh same situation

[jpellegrini]

One more thing: the GMP crashes in this case:

#include <gmp.h>

int main() {
  mpz_t res;
  mpz_init(res);
  mpz_ui_pow_ui(res,2,10000000000000);
  gmp_printf("%Zd\n", res);
  mpz_clear(res);
}

The result of running this program is a Floating point exception. And this is the GMP alone, no libgc...