A bignum system in a
computer or program allocates arbitrary amounts of system memory and allows internal representation of arbitrarily large
integers or arbitrarily precise
rational numbers. First implemented in MacLISP
?, it is implemented in most modern
lisps and in many other languages (
Ruby,
Python). The
VAX/
VMS operating system offered bignum facilities as a collection of [string functions]
?.
See also: [GNU Multi-Precision Library]?