syphilis:

I'd expect to see 255, but I wouldn't object to seeing a warning if the SVf_UTF8 flag was set on the input variable. The GMP manual gives enough information for an experienced programmer to see that GMP is expecting a binary vector of fixed-length words to process, and the internal UTF codepoints of perl are clearly not that. So handing a UTF encoded string to that function is at least suspicious.

I think I'd add a chunk to the modules POD to tell users how to handle UTF strings, and make the module issue a warning if it's presented with a UTF string, so they'd be directed to look at that part of the documentation. You might also modify the $order and/or $endian parameters to give a combination that would let them indicate that you should do the decode for them if they see the UTF string.

My reasoning is essentially that the GMP documentation for import clearly indicates that we should be treating the data as a vector of fixed-length words, and UTF encoding is *not* that. If we see a UTF flag on a string, I'd expect that *some* conversion happened somewhere (whether intentional or unintentional) such that the oft-assumed¹ bytes == characters assumption does not necessarily hold true.

I often wish that we had a flag on the variables that would let us specify that the buffer holds an exact representation of the bytes that came from the data source, so we could tell when the data was munged. But of course, I have no idea how to define appropriate semantics, as there's no way to get people to agree on the set of cases where we could change the string without turning that flag off (chop, chomp, s///, tr, ....), and/or how to create a string with the flag set appropriately without too much fuss and bother.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.