Should/does the "number" package support bigints?

[gwhitney]

Right now, the mathjs library comes in two flavors: the "full" one that has Fraction and Complex and BigNumber support, and the "number" one that "just supports numbers". But the latter doesn't really "just support numbers" -- it allows strings and booleans, for example. So I thought it would be good to clarify and document whether the flavors are/should be really "everything" and "numbers and as little else as possible" or "everything" and "only built-in native JavaScript types," in which case the "number" one should perhaps really be thought of as the "builtin types" one, and presumably it would have bigint, string, boolean, Array, and Object support (a list that may not be exhaustive). Thoughts?

[josdejong]

The original idea of the "number" package to have a lightweight solution for a very common need, namely having a parser and a set of functions to evaluate basic maths. The lightweight version does not include big classes like DenseMatrix (and a large set of matrix functions), BigNumber, Complex, Fraction, etc.

I think adding Array would make the package heavy weight again because it adds all matrix functionality. Adding bigint would not add that much weight I expect, but I also think it's not a very common use case, so I think it would be best to leave that out too.

We're making plans and prototypes for a refactored core of the library. I hope that will make it trivial to just pick the functions and datatypes that you need, making it easier to roll your own "number only" package, or roll your own "number and bigint only" package if that is what you need.

[gwhitney]

OK thanks for clarifying that the number package is numbers, strings, booleans only. Closing this.