Math::Bigfloat worries

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

So I am calculating the square root of a large number using a short script on a PIII 866/128MB/256MBswap. Its been running for 6 hours at nice -20, > 99% CPU utilization/ >85% memory and I realize I forgot to provide a scale attribute. How long will the script run, I don't need the trailing digits. Should I stop and start over with scaling added?

Comment on Math::Bigfloat worries

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Re: Math::Bigfloat worries by scain (Curate) on Aug 10, 2001 at 18:32 UTC
Honestly, I have no idea. However, what you may want to do, since you expect this to take a long time, is try to figure out how this problem scales. If you have access to another machine, try running the same script with smaller numbers to get a feeling for how much of a difference adding and removing scaling makes. That's the best I can do. Good luck, Scott	[reply]
Re: Math::Bigfloat worries by sadisticyoda (Initiate) on Aug 10, 2001 at 19:58 UTC
It finally crashed with an out of memory error around 8CST this morning, so that would put it at ~10 hours of runtime. I'll give her a shot with the scale attribte to see if i can fix it. --And abashed the devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is --Milton "Paradise Lost" Book 4.	[reply]