In this case, you just need either one of the values converted to a
BigInt, and big(2)^32 is marginally more efficient than 2^big(32),
since it allocates one less BigInt.

Also, wouldn't typemax(Int)/typemax(Uint) be what you want here?

On 12 January 2014 14:29, Ivar Nesje <[email protected]> wrote:
> I really agree that this is a mistake that is easily made. There is a FAQ
> answer that explains why we use integer arithmetic with silent overflow.
>
> I think Julia would benefit from a simpler way to express numerical
> constants with type than to first create a Float64 / Int32/64 and then send
> to constructor, but I have not (yet) found a syntax to suggest that would
> get approval.
>
> One idea might be to implement a @big macro that would allow you to write
> @big(2^32)
> and it would be automatically translated to
> big(2)^big(32)
>
> The problem is that it will not work (in a sensible way) for floating point,
> because the macro will not be able to see the string representation, but the
> closest Float64 version. This means that 0.1 will be
> 1.000000000000000055511151231257827021181583404541015625e-01 instead of
> 1.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002e-01
>
> kl. 17:02:25 UTC+1 søndag 12. januar 2014 skrev Földes László følgende:
>>
>> This little piece of code tricked me:
>>
>> if value < big(2^32)
>>     println("Finished!")
>>     break
>> end
>>
>> The println was never executed and couldn't find the problem for about 3
>> minutes when I tried it on a 64 bit OS, where it worked.
>> The problem is that on 32-bit OS 2^32 equals to zero. I'm just getting
>> used to Julia internals and it is not really a problem if it is apparent,
>> but I clearly need more time with the language to spot these kind of error.
>>
>> if value < big(2)^big(32)
>>     println("Finished!")
>>     break
>> end
>> solve this. But this is ugly and it looks like something that can be
>> automated.
>>
>> is there any coding style that can prevent this error? I would better
>> receive an overflow error (if it is turned on with a flag to the Julia
>> executable maybe) than a silent, never running piece of code.

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