Field Comparisons

[critesjosh]

Problem

Being able to compare Fields in Noir would be useful. I know you can use the BigUint library for the same functionality, but I expect that uses more gates.

Happy Case

I can compare large Field elements without using an external library.

Alternatives Considered

No response

Additional Context

No response

Would you like to submit a PR for this Issue?

No

Support Needs

No response

[Savio-Sou]

Fields currently support == equality checks.

Adding support for larger than / smaller than comparisons on top of that would bring us ... drum roll ... the unsigned integers currently in Noir 😂

[critesjosh]

The use case is to compare ethereum addresses for sorting without having to use the biguint library. Eth addresses are 160 bits and native uints only go up to 127, right?

[Savio-Sou]

Hmm in that case further optimizing BigUInt's performance might be the way to go.

I recall @kevaundray / @guipublic floated around the idea of BigField that might help optimize BigUInt; any thoughts?

[guipublic]

field comparison is implemented in stdlib; eddsa::lt_bytes32