Distinguish between small and big integers

[mohamed-barakat]

This PR is a rebased resurrection of #1633 that I had to close since I cannot push into Fabian's branches:

@zickgraf wrote in #1633 (comment):

This is a tentative attempt to distinguish between small and big integers in GAP to mirror the situation in Julia. Doing this across the whole codebase seems like an enormous effort. I'm not sure if this effort is worth it.

@mohamed-barakat If you are interested in this, we can look at some examples (e.g. the CategoryOfRows) in more detail and check what would have to be done.

[mohamed-barakat]

@mohamed-barakat replied in #1633 (comment):

This is a tentative attempt to distinguish between small and big integers in GAP to mirror the situation in Julia. Doing this across the whole codebase seems like an enormous effort. I'm not sure if this effort is worth it.

@mohamed-barakat If you are interested in this, we can look at some examples (e.g. the CategoryOfRows) in more detail and check what would have to be done.

Yes, I am interested. I would also like to have a version of SkeletalFinSets which uses the small integers and not the gmp-integers.

[mohamed-barakat]

@zickgraf replied in #1633 (comment):

Yes, I am interested. I would also like to have a version of SkeletalFinSets which uses the small integers and not the gmp-integers.

What application do you have in mind? This category would not have products etc. anymore, correct?

[mohamed-barakat]

@zickgraf replied in #1633 (comment):

There are also some subtleties in Julia when working with ranges of big ints:

julia> typeof(length(BigInt(1):BigInt(1)))
BigInt

julia> typeof(length(map(x -> x,BigInt(1):BigInt(1))))
Int64

[mohamed-barakat]

@kamalsaleh: Could this be interesting for what you are currently working on?