The Bignum reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Bignum

A bignum system in a computer or program allows internal representation of arbitrarily large integers or arbitrarily precise rational numbers and implements arithmetic operations on such numbers. Numbers are typically stored as (ratios of) digit lists which can grow using dynamically allocated memory.

Bignums were first implemented in MacLisp. The VAX/VMS operating system offered bignum facilities as a collection of string functionss. Today bignum libraries are available for practically every modern programming language. The GNU Multi-Precision Library is a free C library that offers bignum features. All computer algebra systems implement bignum facilities.

Bignum systems often employ fast multiplication algorithms and many provide number theoretic primitives such as modular exponentiation.

See also: large numbers.

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