# ba_new

Definition: | include builtins\bigatom.e bigatom ba = ba_new(object x)
Description: | Create a bigatom instance value. Returns a bigatom, which may be NO_VALUE when an error has occured.
Comments: | The parameter x can be integer, atom, or string. Obviously all the limitations for integer and atom parameters apply, whereas string parameters can be exact, to however many decimals you can type. Apart from available memory, there are no known limits to precision, however we can make some observations about the likely limits of exponents. While (on a 32 bit system) the largest atom is around 1e308, so the largest exponent is 308, for a bigatom the exponent itself is held in an atom, which can hold all integers up to 9,007,199,254,740,992, and theoretically but with some loss of accuracy, exponents up to 1e308. Writing a bigbigatom library, with bigatom exponents, is left as an exercise for the reader.
Example: |
    include bigatom.e
    bigatom ba = ba_new("0.123456789012345678901234567890123456789E+987654321")
See Also: | ba_new, ba_scale