Upper limit?!

[Markus Stenberg]

David Oppenheimer <davidopp at megsinet.net> writes:
> Wow, that's quite a difference! on an Alpha you can have a 19 digit number
> as opposed to a 10 digit number on my Pentium.  So the limit isn't actually
> a factor of the programming language but a virtue (or limitation) of my
> processor.  I wonder if Intel knows about this?!   LOL  Makes me want to

Yes, for machine-spesific ints.. However, some languages can kludge around
it, like Python's bigints:

fingon at dreamland »uname -m
i686
fingon at dreamland »python
Python 1.5.2 (#0, Jul 16 1999, 19:02:32)  [GCC egcs-2.91.66 Debian
GNU/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)] on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> len(str(2L**666))
202
>>>

202 digits, baby ;-)

> sell this hunk of crap Packard Hell P-75, get rid of Win98 and buy an Alpha
> running Linux.   That PSN number thing scares the hell outta me any ways,
> I'm either going AMD or Alpha next go around.

Heh.

> David O.

-Markus Stenberg

-- 
 Running Windows on a Pentium is like having a brand new Porsche but
 only be able to drive backwards with the handbrake on.
	(Unknown source)