* Dan Minette ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

> Fair enough.  If you have both, and an overnight computer run to
> spare, your solution is the best.  I was thinking more of cost/benefit
> for someone on a budget who had to pick something to buy.

I didn't have either on my computer when I got up this morning. I didn't
have GiNaC, either. But overnight to calculate 5M digits sounded way too
long to me. So I took a quick look for free software that could do it
(about 3 min of reading), decided GiNaC looked good, and typed

>apt-cache search ginac

ginac-tools - Some tools for the GiNaC framework
libginac-dev - The GiNaC framework (development files)
libginac1.3 - The GiNaC framework (runtime library)

>apt-get install libginac-dev

and then I pasted the GiNaC equivalent of "hello, world" into my text
editor, edited a couple lines, and ran it on 1 000 000! to start. In
less than a minute I had the answer. Then I ran it on the requested
number which took 8 minutes, and posted the results.

Total expenditure: $0, and a few minutes of time (it actually took me
longer to create the post summarizing the results than it did to install
the software and calculate the results)

On the other hand if 8 minutes is too quick for you and you'd rather
wait several days for Mathematica to calculate 5M!, then that is of
course the "best solution" if it makes you feel better about all the
money you spent on Mathematica...


--
Erik Reuter   http://www.erikreuter.net/
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