On 9/2/06, Jean-Claude Arbaut <jcarbaut / laposte.net> wrote:

>
> Hence, 2^y when y is a bignum (that is, y > 2^30 - 1), always
> raises a warning. And if y is a Fixnum, that depends on
> the size of the result (a warning when there is about 1 million
> binary digits). It's rather annoying to get a float in that case...
> but I guess it's supposed to prevent a very long computation (that
> cannot be interrupted by Ctrl-C) when there is a mistake in the
> program.

And it's really not a limit on Bignums in general, just on the argument to ^.

One limit WOULD be how much memory is available, but that's going to
be hardware dependent.

-- 
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/