Is it intentional making even uint8 as type of bigInt

[zfy0701]

Ethers Beta Version

6.0.0-beta-exports.14

Describe the Problem

it's actually in the get started doc,

event decimal should return uint8 (where number is enough), ethers6 return using bigint, isn't number enough in this case or are we just using bigint for all integer type in the new version?

Code Snippet

No response

Errors

No response

Environment

node.js

Environment (Other)

No response

[ricmoo]

Yes, all numeric types in v6 return an ES2020 BigInt. Also, all methods in v6 that accept a number also accept a BigInt.

This allows things like (10n ** (await contract.decimals())) * (await contract.count()). If the types were number and BigInt you won't be able to do this without casting first. You can also use formatUnits(await contract.balanceOf(addr), await contract.decimals()) since Ethers allows the BigInt as a Numeric type. :)

It was always a bit painful in v5 having to know the return type to know what you could do with a result; but it was also more painful dealing with BigNumber when you didn't have to. Now it's easy to use BigInt everywhere. :)