Slap on a few methods that represent mathematical operations, and we’re ready to go. It might be easier, though, to handle arrays of digits.

In the simplest of cases, those custom objects can, at their core, actually be just strings of digits. When doing pen-and-paper-calculations, you’re actually manipulating strings of digits, and that’s exactly how we are going to solve this problem: We’re not going to use (limited) built-in number types, but custom objects representing numbers of arbitrary size. With pen and paper, there’s no limit to the size of the numbers we can work with, except the size of the sheet of paper - and that’s where a) (the memory limit) comes in. So, what are we supposed to do if we want to do precise calculations on large numbers? Well, we could just do our calculations ourselves. (len = lenPlusOne ? 'the same number.' : 'different numbers.' ) )

log ( 'So, ' + len + ' and (' + len + ' + 1) are actually ' +

log ( 'In Javascript, ' + len + ' + 1 = ' + lenPlusOne + '.' ) Ĭonsole. pow ( 2, 53 ) // Largest Exact NumberĬonsole. You can try that in the following example - if we add 1 to the largest exact number, it will be rounded, so it will actually stay the same: That’s it - go any higher, and you won’t be dealing with exact numbers any more. For Javascript, that means that the largest number that can be handled exactly (meaning without rounding) is 2^53, which is 9007199254740992. The reason for b) is that numbers that are small enough to fit into a processor register can be dealt with directly by the CPU on a hardware-level, instead of taking a detour through some piece of software, so it’s reasonable to limit number sizes that way, in order to ensure lightning-fast calculations. On vintage hardware calculators, that limit presented itself in the size of the display - the actual reason for that limit lies deeper, though: a) there’s only limited memory to work with, and b) if a certain number size is not exceeded, calculations can be done a lot faster. Every calculator has a limit on how large a number it can deal with while still producing exact results.

Big numbers calculator display