Re: Reduce NUMERIC size by 2 bytes, reduce max length to 508 digits

On 12/5/05, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> > Not only does 4000! not work, but 400! doesn't even work. I just lost
> > demo "wow" factor points!
>
> It looks like the limit would be about factorial(256).
>
> The question remains, though, is this computational range good for
> anything except demos?

I've hesitated commenting, because I think it might be a silly reason,
but perhaps it's one other people share. ... I use PG as a
calculator for big numbers because it's the only user friendly thing
on my system that can do factorial(300) - factorial(280). I'd rather
use something like octave, but I've found its pretty easy to escape
its range. If the range for computation is changed, then I'll
probably keep an old copy around just for this, though I'm not quite
sure how much I'd be affected..