[erlang-questions] binary_to_integer/1 and binary_to_float/1 and friends

[José Valim]

At the beginning of this year, there was a discussion about how to
implement binary_to_integer/1 in Erlang.
There is a possible implementation for such function which is quite trivial:

    list_to_integer(binary_to_list(binary))

However, it has the trade-off that it can't be used in guards (unless
defined in a macro) and there is an unnecessary conversion cost to list
(although the cost is small since both binary and list are likely small).

With Riak, Cowboy and other tools pushing towards using binaries instead of
lists for strings, the need for such functions will become more and more
common.
Is there any chance we will see this as built-in functions and therefore
available in guards in R16?

Thanks,

*
José Valim
www.plataformatec.com.br
Founder and Lead Developer
*
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