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BigInteger.pow(BigInteger)?

Asked 2011-01-03T05:39:33.967
31

I'm playing with numbers in Java, and want to see how big a number I can make. It is my understanding that BigInteger can hold a number of infinite size, so long as my computer has enough Memory to hold such a number, correct?

My problem is that BigInteger.pow accepts only an int, not another BigInteger, which means I can only use a number up to 2,147,483,647 as the exponent. Is it possible to use the BigInteger class as such?

BigInteger.pow(BigInteger)

Thanks.

java math biginteger pow
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2 Answers

15

You can only do this in Java by modular arithmetic, meaning you can do a a^b mod c, where a,b,c are BigInteger numbers.

This is done using:

 BigInteger modPow(BigInteger exponent, BigInteger m)

Read the BigInteger.modPow documentation here.

answered 2013-01-10T17:32:16.047
1

java wont let you do BigInteger.Pow(BigInteger) but you can just put it to the max integer in a loop and see where a ArithmeticException is thrown or some other error due to running out of memory.

answered 2011-01-03T05:51:08.243

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