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Use ALTREP #34

@krlmlr

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@krlmlr

I'm looking for a vector class that supports integers with arbitrary precision that works in a data frame/tibble. This package fulfills the need, but storage is inefficient (R strings), and all kinds of arithmetics require an expensive parse-deparse from strings to the binary format.

With ALTREP we could make use of the underlying library's storage format and convert to strings or numerics as necessary. NA values are a challenge but we could use a vctrs record with a raw vector on the R side or a bit array on the C++ side. Would you support this? Should we also support fixed-width integers (int8, int16, int32, int64, int128, int256)?

I'm also wondering if you'd be open to inlining/vendoring the required Boost headers, as done e.g. in r-dbi/RSQLite#362. For DBI and related packages, we'd rather avoid using {BH} because it installs so many files.

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