mixed type operations in Octave

[soren at hauberg.org]

Quoting Jaroslav Hajek <highegg at gmail.com>:
> 7. pretend that there always exists a real type wide enough to hold
> all 64-bit integers, and use the semantics "convert both operands to
> wide real, do OP, convert to intXX". On systems where this type really
> exists (like the 80-bit long double on x86) it could be implemented
> directly; otherwise, it would need software emulation (painfully slow
> and laborious).

Just out of curiosity, but would it be possible to have a long_double  
type in Octave, and would such a type solve the difficulties? Having a  
long_double type might be nice to have anyway.

Søren