in reply to Arithmetic on numbers bigger than 1<<31

It can "do math" on it, presumably because the value just overflows... I doubt the value is correct.

Use should consider using BigInt/BigFloat for very large numbers, as if you get too many significant digits normal floating point math is going to lose accuracy...but of course there is a speed tradeoff.

  • Comment on Re: Arithmetic on numbers bigger than 1<<31

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Re: Re: Arithmetic on numbers bigger than 1<<31
by thor (Priest) on May 13, 2004 at 20:29 UTC
    But that's the thing: it is doing at least some things correctly. I wanted to see what would happen with this code: 
    perl -le 'print $i+=100_000_000 while 1'

    [download]
    ...and it takes it like a champ, not reaching "Infinity" until something like 1e315. Also, this looks right, too: 
    perl -le 'print (((1<<31)**(1<<5)), " ",((1<<31)**(1<<5)/2))'

    [download]
    So, perl is somehow doing the arithmetic...maybe it's just lucky. :)

    thor

    p.s. This whole thing was more of a curiosity than anything. I've used Math::BigInt before. I was just perplexed by something that I would have expected not to work.
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