Issue #20811 has been reported by mame (Yusuke Endoh). ---------------------------------------- Feature #20811: `warning: in a**b, b may be too big` is really helpful? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/20811 * Author: mame (Yusuke Endoh) * Status: Open ---------------------------------------- I tried to calculate the largest prime number recently discovered. However, it did not work. I was a bit disappointed. ``` $ ruby -e 'p 2**136279841-1' -e:1: warning: in a**b, b may be too big Infinity ``` I know this is not a realistic case, but I checked my past chat logs and found a record of the same thing six years ago and the same disappointment. ``` $ ruby -e 'p 2**77232917-1' -e:1: warning: in a**b, b may be too big Infinity ``` So I would like to ask, has anyone experienced that this behavior has actually been helpful? I think that this limit is to prevent a program from unintentionally spending too much time and memory trying to compute a power that is too large. However, is it helpful to return Infinity in such a situation? I think raising an exception would be safer, if this limit is really needed. Also, is this limit appropriate? On my machine, `2 ** 32537661` is calculated normally and `2 ** 32537662` returns Infinity. This calculation took about 100 ms and 400 kB. I think this is short enough for a single computation time. Incidentally, `2 ** 32537661` in decimal notation is 9,794,814 digits, which may be too loose a limit considering the display. Note that this limit only applies when calculating the power directly. `(2 ** 32537661) * 2` returns an Integer, not Infinity. Even `1 << 32537662` gives an Integer. From the above, I suspect that this limit is not particularly useful and only spoils the fun of mathematics. What do you think? -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/