GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 581289
Large chained exponentials give invalid results
Last modified: 2010-04-09 01:38:12 UTC
Please describe the problem: Integers with an exponent that is very long give the wrong answer. The answer tends to be 1 unless the integer is x^(x^(x^(x^(x^x)))) or some variation of that for greater integers where (x^(x^(x^(x^x)))) is very big. When it isn't 1 it has a pattern for integers that are the same eg. Steps to reproduce: 1. 6^(6^(6^6)) 2. 6^(6^(6^(6^6))) 3. 6^(6^(6^(6^(6^6)))) 4. 6^(6^(6^(6^(6^(6^6))))) 5. 6^(6^(6^(6^(6^(6^(6^6)))))) Actual results: 1. 1 = 6^0 2. 6 = 6^1 3. 46656 = 6^6 4. 2.659119772e+36305 = 6^46656 5. 1 = 6^0 Expected results: I was hoping for Knuth's up-arrow notation but expecting an overflow error or crashing. Does this happen every time? I've tried the pattern from 2 to 11 and variations of odd/even numbers which isn't a very wide range but I don't know how to use gcalc from bash. Other information:
Oh, ignore the pattern part, I guess I'm an idiot/tired.
Confirming, depending on how you write the equations it gives different results: 6^6^6^6= -> 1 6^6=^6=^6= -> 1.204120868e+168
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 611970 ***