Am I correct in assuming that it is not a question of how "big" or "small" the values which you are working with are, but rather how many significant digits you need to work with?

8.98846567431158e+307 and 4.94065645841247e-324 seem large / small enough for most purposes, but if you need the full 300+ significant digits of accuracy, then Math::BigFloat or Match::BigInt are your only solution.

If about 14 significant digits are sufficient, then you do not seem to need these packages.

The number 14 is not at all magical. The Camel-book says:
To convert from number to string, it does the equivalent of an sprintf(3) with a format of "%.14g" on most machines. (Programming Perl, 3ed, p. 59)

This of course begs the question: How many significant digits are really used internally? It would take wiser monks than me, to answer that.

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

In reply to Re: Determining when Math::BigFloat is necessary? by CountZero
in thread Determining when Math::BigFloat is necessary? by jasonk

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