Scala Cookbook

2.6. Handling Very Large Numbers

Problem

You’re writing an application and need to use very large integer or decimal numbers.

Solution

Use the Scala BigInt and BigDecimal classes. You can create a BigInt:

scala> var b = BigInt(1234567890)
b: scala.math.BigInt = 1234567890

or a BigDecimal:

scala> var b = BigDecimal(123456.789)
b: scala.math.BigDecimal = 123456.789

Unlike their Java equivalents, these classes support all the operators you’re used to using with numeric types:

scala> b + b
res0: scala.math.BigInt = 2469135780

scala> b * b
res1: scala.math.BigInt = 1524157875019052100

scala> b += 1

scala> println(b)
1234567891

You can convert them to other numeric types:

scala> b.toInt
res2: Int = 1234567891

scala> b.toLong
res3: Long = 1234567891

scala> b.toFloat
res4: Float = 1.23456794E9

scala> b.toDouble
res5: Double = 1.234567891E9

To help avoid errors, you can also test them first to see if they can be converted to other numeric types:

scala> b.isValidByte
res6: Boolean = false

scala> b.isValidChar
res7: Boolean = false

scala> b.isValidShort
res8: Boolean = false

scala> if (b.isValidInt) b.toInt
res9: AnyVal = 1234567890

Discussion

Although the Scala BigInt and BigDecimal classes are backed by the Java BigInteger and BigDecimal classes, they are simpler to use than their Java counterparts. As you can see in the examples, they work just like other numeric types, and they’re also mutable (as you saw in the += example). These are nice improvements over the Java classes.

Before using BigInt or