                    =====================================
                      Package "Bit::Vector" Version 4.2
                    =====================================
                      for Perl version 5.000 and higher

     Copyright (c) 1995, 1996, 1997 by Steffen Beyer. All rights reserved.
     This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
     it under the same terms as Perl itself.


Credits:
--------

Many thanks to Andreas Koenig <upload@franz.ww.tu-berlin.de> for his
efforts as upload-manager for the CPAN, his patience, and lots of good
advice and suggestions! Thank you for doing such a tremendous (and time-
consuming) job!!

Also many thanks to David Jenkins <jenkins@sdm.de> for reviewing the
first version of this README file and the man page.

Many thanks to Jarkko Hietaniemi <Jarkko.Hietaniemi@hut.fi> for his
suggestions while I was developing the first release of this package!

Many thanks also to the people of the perl5-porters <perl5-porters@nicoh.com>
mailing list, specifically:

Andreas Koenig <andreas.koenig@mind.de>
Tim Bunce <Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk>
Jarkko Hietaniemi <Jarkko.Hietaniemi@hut.fi>
Felix Gallo <fsg@coriolan.amicus.com>
Mark A Biggar <mab@wdl.loral.com>
Nick Ing-Simmons <nik@tiuk.ti.com>
John Macdonald <jmm@elegant.com>

for discussing and clarifying the naming and other issues of this package!

Also many thanks to David Thompson <dlt@dewey.csun.edu> for reporting a
problem he encountered concerning the inclusion of the Perl distribution
("Unable to find include file ...") and for suggesting a solution for this
problem. (That's the most pleasant kind of problem report, of course! ;-) )

Many thanks to Rob Johnson <rjohnson@apple.com> for an improved algorithm
for computing binomials with always integer intermediate results (and
numbers never getting too big)!

Thanks to Banchong Harangsri <bjtong@cse.unsw.edu.au> for reporting the
problem of the version 1.1 of this module with Perl 5.002!

Special thanks to Dean Roehrich <roehrich@cray.com> for his assistance
in trying to find the cause of and a remedy for the above problem!

Many thanks to Andreas Koenig for notifying me of the alternative for the
directory structure using the "lib" subdirectory and a way to use "confess"
in an XSUB via "perl_eval_sv".

Many special thanks to Larry Schwimmer <rosebud@cyclone.stanford.edu> for
reporting the bug related to 64 bit machines and finding where an implicit
assumption of 32 bit integers was hidden, and for testing the new version
on his machine!

Many thanks to Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com> for suggesting
the four new methods ("Size()", "Empty_Interval()", "Fill_Interval()" and
"Flip_Interval()") implemented in version 3.0 of the "Set::IntegerFast"
module (and also in the "Set::IntegerRange" module)!

Also many thanks to Ralf Engelschall for the many good suggestions that
went into version 4.0 of this package (concerning many different aspects)!

Many thanks to Stas Bekman <sbekman@iil.intel.com> for raising the question
of bitwise shift and rotation operations in Perl, which gave me the idea to
implement such shift registers with arbitrary size, which in turn and with
time gave me the idea of implementing a "Bit::Vector" base class capable of
this along with already existing functionality (for sets and boolean matrices).

Also many thanks to Jon Orwant <orwant@media.mit.edu> and Tim Bunce
<Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk> for their suggestions and comments concerning my
first attempts at writing a module for bitwise shift and rotate operations
in Perl, which eventually went into version 4.0 of this module!


