I would expect any language that does not support an operation to not allow attempts to use it. Perl does not directly support 64-bit integer exponentiation. without strong typing, it has no way to know that we expect it. What it does do when we try to raise an integer to an integer power is exact if the result is less than 2**53, and almost always 'good enough" the rest of the time. Perhaps there should be an optional warning when it attempts to cast a result greater than 2**53 and less than 2**63 to an integer.