Subject: Re: How do I calculate 2^850000 and see all the digits?
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1995/12/12
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <19951212T140506Z@arcana.naggum.no>

[Peter Adams]

|   If you want to see the result as a binary number it is simply 1
|   followed by 850000 zeros.  You don't even need a Lisp program to tell
|   you that 8-)

this implies to me that (ash 1 850000) would do the job perfectly.

|   Here are two ways to calculate the answer in bignums.  They work in ACL
|   so I preume the answer would be the same with GCL:

GCL gets severely depressed when faced with very large bignums.  even after
(si::multiply-bignum-stack n), which is complains is necessary, it dumps
core with an "unrecoverable error".  (n = 20, n = 10 is too small, other
values not tested.)

#<Erik 3027765906>
-- 
suppose we actually were immortal...
what is the opposite of living your life as if every day were your last?