Math::BigInt(3)

NAME
Math::BigInt - Arbitrary size integer math package

SYNOPSIS

  use Math::BigInt;
  $i = Math::BigInt->new($string);
  $i->bneg return BINT               negation
  $i->babs return BINT               absolute value
  $i->bcmp(BINT) return CODE         compare numbers (undef,<0,=0,>0)
  $i->badd(BINT) return BINT         addition
  $i->bsub(BINT) return BINT         subtraction
  $i->bmul(BINT) return BINT         multiplication
  $i->bdiv(BINT) return (BINT,BINT)  division (quo,rem) just quo if scalar
  $i->bmod(BINT) return BINT         modulus
  $i->bgcd(BINT) return BINT         greatest common divisor
  $i->bnorm return BINT              normalization

DESCRIPTION
All basic math operations are overloaded if you declare your big integers as

  $i = new Math::BigInt '123 456 789 123 456 789';

Canonical notation
    Big integer value are strings of the form /^[+-]\d+$/ with leading zeros suppressed.

Input
    Input values to these routines may be strings of the form /^\s*[+-]?[\d\s]+$/.

Output
    Output values always always in canonical form

Actual math is done in an internal format consisting of an array whose first element is the sign (/^[+-]$/) and whose remaining elements are base 100000 digits with the least significant digit first. The string 'NaN' is used to represent the result when input arguments are not numbers, as well as the result of dividing by zero.

EXAMPLES

   '+0'                            canonical zero value
   '   -123 123 123'               canonical value '-123123123'
   '1 23 456 7890'                 canonical value '+1234567890'

Autocreating constants
After use Math::BigInt ':constant' all the integer decimal constants in the given scope are converted to Math::BigInt. This conversion happens at compile time.

In particular

  perl -MMath::BigInt=:constant -e 'print 2**100'
print the integer value of 2**100. Note that without conversion of constants the expression 2**100 will be calculated as floating point number.

BUGS
The current version of this module is a preliminary version of the real thing that is currently (as of perl5.002) under development.

AUTHOR
Mark Biggar, overloaded interface by Ilya Zakharevich.