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. :) 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.