On Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 07:33:06AM -0500, Andrew Hunt wrote:
> 	>You can always use bitwise-or to set particular bit.
> 	>
> 	>  a |= nth_bit
> 	>
> 	>just like C, without size limitation.
> 
> Except that this form makes a copy of the bignum, and for
> a 40k pile of bits that's pretty slow :-(.

In this case, why not use an array of shorter integers?

  def set_bit(vector, index)
    bucket = index & 63
    bit = index >> 6
    vector[bucket] |= 1 << bit
  end

Or something like this.

			Reimer Behrends