Issue #6986 has been updated by mrkn (Kenta Murata). I cannot reproduce NoMemoryError on my environment. However I think the following behaviors for the large parameters may be inconsistent, so I will attempt to fix these behavior. Unfortunately I may not be able to fix NoMemoryError because I don't have the environment of mswin32. Please submit your patch for fixing it. $ ruby-head -v ruby 2.0.0dev (2012-09-06 trunk 36915) [x86_64-darwin11.4.0] $ $ ruby-head -rbigdecimal -e 'p BigDecimal("1e-10").power(1e7)' #<BigDecimal:7fbd51033f98,'0.1E-99999999',9(100000026)> $ $ ruby-head -rbigdecimal -e 'p BigDecimal("1e-10").power(1e8)' #<BigDecimal:7f8401033f90,'0.1E-999999999',9(1000000026)> $ $ ruby-head -rbigdecimal -e 'p BigDecimal("1e-10").power(1e10)' -e:1:in `power': integer 10000000000 too big to convert to `int' (RangeError) from -e:1:in `<main>' $ $ ruby-head -rbigdecimal -e 'p BigDecimal("1e-10").power(1e19)' #<BigDecimal:7fe595004998,'0.0',9(18)> ---------------------------------------- Bug #6986: Inconsistent result of BigDecimal#power https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/6986#change-29204 Author: phasis68 (Heesob Park) Status: Assigned Priority: Normal Assignee: mrkn (Kenta Murata) Category: ext Target version: ruby -v: ruby 2.0.0dev (2012-09-05 trunk 36913) [i386-mswin32_100] I found BigDecimal#power returns incorrect result for a large value. C:\tmp>ruby -rbigdecimal -e "p BigDecimal('1e-10').power(1e7)" #<BigDecimal:a2bdb8,'0.1E-99999999',9(100000026)> C:\tmp>ruby -rbigdecimal -e "p BigDecimal('1e-10').power(1e8)" -e:1:in `power': failed to allocate memory (NoMemoryError) from -e:1:in `<main>' C:\tmp>ruby -rbigdecimal -e "p BigDecimal('1e-10').power(1e10)" #<BigDecimal:f7cb3c,'0.0',9(18)> C:\tmp>ruby -rbigdecimal -e "p BigDecimal('1e-10').power(1e19)" #<BigDecimal:f7cb3c,'Infinity',9(18)> -- http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/