Thanks for the responses, I have seen Math::Integer before and have played with it.

I have heavily profiled the code with NYTProf making improvements here and there for the last few months with a major rewrite the other day. The slow part is the math, mainly one nasty do { } while ( ) construct. I think that I've reached the limit of what I can optimize, this implementation is already a heavily optimized / rewrite of another algorithm, and my question was a long shot and curiosity. Normally, I wouldn't really bother optimizing it since it is "fast enough", but it's been a slow week at work lol. Yeah, I'll probably try an Inline::C implementation before a true C rewrite when the free time comes to do it.

I do think it would be interesting if we could have access to strongly typing all the variable types in C when we need it, and the more easy to work with standard Perl types the rest of the time.