Is there an infinite integer?

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

I am currenty developing a game where my position can change in an integer. For instance:

C#

Player.X -= Player.WalkingSpeed;

Now I presumed that the Integer was infinite, but to make sure, I did a quick google check and found this:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/5kzh1b5w%28v=vs.80%29.aspx[^]

Which is telling me that an integer ranges from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. Is there any way I can make an(my) integer (so it)that does not stop at -2,147,483,648 and 2,147,483,647?

Edit: Any other solutions are welcome to, but I need it to be a whole number since I can not use doubles.

Posted 28-Feb-13 10:23am

Yvar Birx

Updated 28-Feb-13 10:25am

v2

Add a Solution

Comments

Richard C Bishop 28-Feb-13 16:25pm

Yes, use a Long. It mine as well be infinite.

Yvar Birx 28-Feb-13 16:31pm

Cheers man. If no other solutions, I'll choose yours.

joshrduncan2012 28-Feb-13 16:37pm

I'd go with long or use the custom BigInt class.

2 solutions

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-28T10:32:00

Solution 1

No. And it is not needed. But you can use positive and negative infinity and not-a-number with floating-point types and do value arithmetic with those values.

[EDIT]

Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754[^].

—SA

Posted 28-Feb-13 10:32am

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

Updated 28-Feb-13 10:41am

v2

Comments

Richard C Bishop 28-Feb-13 16:36pm

Nice, +5. I didn't even know about that, thank you.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 28-Feb-13 16:50pm

Oh! they are very important! Well before .NET, when one had to build corresponding bit patterns to use them (by IEEE-754 standard, see a link after [EDIT]), I found some good uses for them:
default value, "no data", "unassigned". On very effective use way drawing histogram-like graphs (with fixed step). In real life, some points was missing. People did a lot of incorrect things, such as interpolation, but to be true, they should have used some concept of "no point".
In rendering, the graph simply missed the points.

You can do x=-1.0/0 and obtain -inf. Then, you can calculate 1.0 / ( 1.0 + 1/x) and obtain the value 1.0. In .NET, its a correct calculation. Inf - Int, 0.0/0.0, Inf/Inf will give you NaN.
In x86, there is a special flag: to throw exception on such operations, or return inf/NaN. Finally, on .NET they decided to keep this flag to allow such operations. Thanks goodness! If you calculate correctly, it's quite save.

One should understand that floating-point numbers are not real numbers but only the models of them, so extension the values sets with Inf and NaN is more natural.

—SA

Richard C Bishop · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-28T10:33:00

Solution 2

There is not an infinite integer, but you can use a Long. Its range is negative 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to positive 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. That is plus or minus nine quintillion.

Posted 28-Feb-13 10:33am

Richard C Bishop

Updated 28-Feb-13 10:34am

v2

Comments

Yvar Birx 28-Feb-13 16:35pm

Thanks!

Richard C Bishop 28-Feb-13 16:42pm

You are welcome.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 28-Feb-13 16:52pm

My 4, because you should have mentioned (for naive beginners): never use those literals, use int.MinimumValue, int.MaximumValue, uint.MinimumValue, uint.MaximumValue, byte.MinimumValue, byte.MaximumValue, etc.
—SA

Richard C Bishop 28-Feb-13 16:54pm

Fair enough.

Yvar Birx 28-Feb-13 16:57pm

"Naive", I hope you know what the definition means, because this is probably the third time you have insulted me on my questions.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 28-Feb-13 17:08pm

Who told you I tried to characterize you as "naive"? Never! Maybe, in one or two previous cases, I don't remember.

You miss that those pages are read by many readers. Are you going to get every word on your personal account.
And if you think that there is anything negative about "naive", think again. We all are going through "naive" stages each time we get into some new fields. I told some people personally that they are naive in something, and it wasn't considered offensive by anyone — you see, some people are more adequate.

What I'm really concern about is you ability to get offended by such things. I don't want to say something negative — not yet, but I would advise you to be careful about that: we have a number of members who get any criticism as offense. You might be surprised by such view, but in fact, criticism should not be considered as aggressive. But "playing offended card" is often... very aggressive. I hope you are not going to demand that I should stop using this word, because it conduct important and practically useful notion.

Criticism is use to help people to become better. If your critic is mistaken, you should simply stand for your opinion, give arguments, otherwise fix yourself. Many people pointed out my mistakes, and I fixed myself and said "thank you". Everyone could see that. In other cases, I tried to proof that I was correct. I really wish you the same.

Cheers,
—SA