Python

Python can handle Very Large Numbers

Offline Aug 1st, 2005, 9:57 am |

Scientists and deficit spenders like to use Python because it can handle very large numbers. I decided to give it a test with factorials. Factorials reach astronomical levels rather quickly. In case you can't quite remember, the factorial of 12 is !12 = 1*2*3*4*5*6*7*8*9*10*11*12 = 479001600, that is 479 million and some change! After that languages like C++ start to fizzle quickly! At !16 we get past the nations debt. Python can handle that and more! I stopped at !69 only because the display started to wrap the line. The result has 98 digits in it, I thought I made my point anyway.

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# check the numeric range of Python with huge factorials
# factorial(69) still checks out accurately! Has 98 digits in it!
# 171122452428141311372468338881272839092270544893520369393648040923257279754140647424000000000000000
# tested with Python24      vegaseat    01aug2005
 
def getFactorial(n):
    """returns the factorial of n"""
    if n == 0:
        return 1
    else:
        k = n * getFactorial(n-1)
        return k
 
for k in range(1, 70):
    print "factorial of", k,"=", getFactorial(k)

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