Big numbers

We have now several reports in our bugs DB on how PHP handles large numbers. Basically, when number does not fit the unsigned long, it is converted to float. The problem is that when integer operation (like &, ^ or even sprintf("%d") is attempted, the number is silently and wrongly converted back to integer, giving bogus results. Anybody has any explanations on the reasons of such a behavious and any ideas of how to fix it? This is really bad because this all happens "under the carpet" and only thing you know that you suddently start having bogus result. -- Stanislav Malyshev stas@zend.com http://www.zend.com/ +972-3-6139665 ext.106