On Wed, Feb 27, 2002 at 09:35:13PM +0000, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 11:17:55AM +0000, Alex Gough wrote:
> > Yes, at some point allowing 10**222222222222222222222, is just silly,
> > and I doubt the potentional applications are numerous enough to
> > warrant trying it. So long as we're clear about what the limits are,
>
> about 10**98 particles in the universe, isn't it?
> How many real world calculations seriously need numbers considerably
> larger than that?
Remember that many important calculations are not "real world". For
instance, numbers bigger than 10**98 are used routinely in cryptography
(though not bigger than 10**2147483648, which is your point, I think).
I'm sure you could, in theory, get numbers that high when dealing with
statistical stuff. But if people say it hardly ever happens in
practice, then I'm sure they're right.
--
David
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