Description
@griesemer proposes changing the spec to allow implementations to restrict constants to those representable with signed 16-bit binary exponents. The current spec requires implementations to handle at least signed 32-bit binary exponents, so this is strictly speaking a language change. However, existing compilers have handled the very large values being excluded badly, if at all. It has been a constant (ha!) source of bugs and has basically never worked correctly, and we know of no compelling uses for numbers that big in a Go program. Given the difficulty of implementation and lack of utility, the proposal is to remove them. Since they have basically never worked correctly, removing them should affect no real programs.
The exact text is in https://go-review.googlesource.com/17711 but discussion should be on this issue.