Thread: storing really large numbers like 100!

100! = 9.33262154 × 10^157

how would I store this number? I have thought about just putting it in a string.

But lets say I want to compute the number myself by starting at 2 and then multiplying 3 ..followed by 4 all the way till i get to multiplying 100.

I would have to store every intermediate step in a string and somehow 'multiply' these strings?

anyone know of any solution to this?
should I be factoring the numbers?

Thanks a lot!

o yea please, standard library

I guess i will try to do some sort of multiplication with carry over loop and see how that works out.

now thinking about it, it can't be too difficult. (i hope)

edit: now thinking about it..i am also going to have to make a function for addition before i can handle multiplication.

Well so long as you know how to do it on paper, then doing the same using strings is no more difficult.

Not the highest performance to be sure, but it'll work well enough.

Plus, if you make a decent class out of it, you can tinker with the innards later on.

Tried making my addition for strings ... lots of struggle thus far

and dev c++ isn't really helping with its debugger needing some debugging of its own.


any ideas? the program always returns 1 (from the 2nd to last statement)

Code:

string addition(string num1,string num2)
{
     string total = "";
     int numSize;
     int carry=0;
     
     //I want the larger digit number on the top row, just as I would on paper.
     // SWAP
     if(num1.length() < num2.length())
     {
         string temp = num1;
         num1 = num2;
         num2 = temp;  
     }
     numSize = num1.length();
     
     //add zeros so they now match in length...so I can simply go from right to left adding cols.
     while(numSize != num2.length())
     {
            num2= "0" + num2;
     }
     
     for(int i = numSize-1; i >= 0; --i)
     {
                    int sum;

                    //Here I attempt to add characters together and resolve an integer
                    if(sum = (int)num2[i]+(int)num1[i]+carry > 9)
                    {
                        //when adding, the carry is at most 1.
                        carry = 1;
                        total=(convertInt(sum - 10))+total; 
                    }     
                    else
                    {
                        carry=0;
                        total = convertInt(sum) + total;

                    }       
     }
     (carry == 1) ? total = "1" + total : 0;
     return total;
}

(convertInt accepts an int and returns it as a string)

Well if you just input the strings, then you have '0' to '9', not 0 to 9

The actual numeric value of each character is
( num[i] - '0' )

and you do +'0' when you're done with the maths on each character.

> and dev c++ isn't really helping with its debugger needing some debugging of its own.
Dev-c++ is an old and dead project.
code::blocks is it's successor.

I found out the error

if(sum = (int)num2[i]+(int)num1[i]+carry > 9)

the > has precedence over the = ...so sum was always 0 or 1

new line with +'0'

if((sum = (( num2[i]-'0' )+( num1[i]-'0' ))+ carry) > 9)

thank you salem.

I wrote a multiplication now.
edit: nvm it works with humungo numbers.

Code:

string mult(string num1,string num2)
{
     int carry;  
   
    //make sure num1 is longer or equal to num2.
     if(num1.length() < num2.length())
     {
         string temp = num1;
         num1 = num2;
         num2 = temp;
     }

     int num2Size=num2.length();
     int num1Size=num1.length();

     string* additionLines = new string[num2Size];

     for(int i = num2Size-1; i >= 0; --i)
     {
         carry=0;
         additionLines[i]="";
         for(int j = num1Size-1; j >=0; --j)
         {
            
            int product;
            if( (product = ((num2[i]-'0')*(num1[j]-'0')) + carry) > 9 )
            {
                carry = product / 10;
                additionLines[i] = convertInt(product % 10) + additionLines[i];
            }
            else
            {
                carry = 0;
                additionLines[i] = convertInt(product) + additionLines[i];
            }
         }

         if(carry != 0)
            additionLines[i] = convertInt(carry) + additionLines[i];

         if(i < num2Size - 1)
            for(int k=i; k < num2Size - 1; ++k)
                additionLines[i] = additionLines[i] + "0";
     }

     string totalSum="0";

     for(int i = 0; i < num2Size; ++i)
     {
         totalSum = addition(totalSum,additionLines[i]);
     }
     delete[] additionLines;

return totalSum;
}