What is the best way to represent arbitrarily big numbers in c?
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03-07-2019 - |
Question
I'm working on a project that requires me to work with numbers larger than the largest numerical datatype in c. I was thinking of using structs with bit fields to represent this, but it's already smelling bad. Anyone got any tips? (Not looking for a library, more of a thought process to go behind doing something like this.)
Solution
I suggest to first check out the GNU MP Bignum library.
If licensing is a problem you have to roll your own. My first choice for the data-type would be a simple array of unsigned chars along with some extra data to denote how large that array is.
Something like this:
typedef struct
{
unsigned char * NumberData;
size_t AllocatedSize;
} MyBigNum;
Should be sufficient.
OTHER TIPS
The GNU MP Bignum Library would be my first choice.
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