Zero an mpz_t?

[Christ Schlacta]

On 12/18/2011 12:56, Marc Glisse wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Dec 2011, james at jamesbb.co.uk wrote:
>
>> Hiya,
>>
>> Is there a way to 'zero' an mpz_t integer, such that all of the bytes 
>> used to
>> store the number are overwritten?
>>
>> I'm assuming that assigning the value of 0 will not do this, but I 
>> might be
>> mistaken!
>
> Hello,
>
> obviously, you can do it by hand (see 
> http://gmplib.org/manual/Integer-Internals.html), but gmp doesn't 
> provide an interface to do that because there is no (arithmetic) 
> reason to do such a thing.
>
> It is hard to give better advice without knowing what your exact goal is.
>
I'd like to request an interface to do exactly what the OP requested, 
AND/OR to trim the internals to minimum storage requirements.  The 
reasons are purely application design time.  Seems as fine a time as 
any, also, to re-request a compact, stable, binary import/export format 
as well for on disk storage.