arbitrary precision integers (original) (raw)
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summary
Representing arbitrary precision integers in a computer.
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arbitrary precision integers
Representing arbitrary precision integers in a computer.
As mentioned in the subchapter on integers, the integers in most programming languages are intimately tied to the standard int and long sizes supported by the hardware in most modern computers.
When it becomes necessary to represent even bigger integers, the storage and arithmetic must be handled by software.
Very few programming languages directly support arbitrary precision integers as part of the language.
In most cases, the programmer will have to rely on standard libraries or build his or her own software routines.
Programmers should understand the principles of how to build their own arbitrary precision integer routines, although very few programmers will ever actually build the routines theirselves. understnding how these library routines of language features work will allow the programmer to better understand the capabilities and limitations that come with using these routines or language features.
A commonly used C library is the GNU MP.
Java uses the Bignum library.
Perl uses the Bignum library.
Python has numbers of arbitrary precision built into the language.
Originally Python had 32-bit integers (int) and a seperate arbitrary precision integer (long). Longs were indicated by appending L to a number. In Python 2.2 this was changed to have the language automatically convert from the machine supported integers (which are much faster) to the arbitrary precision integers whenever the mathematically correct result of a computation would result in a number too big for the int format. Python 3.0 only has the arbitrarily long integer type, but calls is int.
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