-----Original Message-----
From: "Dave Thomas"<Dave / PragmaticProgrammer.com>
To: "ruby-talk ML"<ruby-talk / netlab.co.jp>
Date: Thu Feb 01 09:51:39 PST 2001
Subject: [ruby-talk:10219] Re: limits on computation?

>Mike Wilson <wmwilson1 / go.com> writes:
>
>> Just fooling around some, I ran this
>> 
>> irb(main):001:0> 1020939**28329282
>
> ...
>

snip

>I'm guessing that 1020939**28329282 would take something like
>12,000,000 seconds to compute, roughly 140 days.
>
>So, it seems like on a sensible-sized box, this is actually a viable
>calculation for Ruby to perform (if you really, really want to know
>the answer and don't mind waiting).
>
>You just didn't wait long enough...  ;-)
>
>
>Dave
>
>

Hmm, I've got a 16-way 10GB RAM Sun Enterprise 6500 sitting here..... ;)

It struck me as pretty cool that it doesn't limit the user, seeing perl basically give up was a shock though.  I'm not completely sure which is more comforting to me.
I guess I'll just need to make sure I check number sizes before doing maths ;)
Mike Wilson
Unix Administrator
http://ruby.weblogs.com
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