How To Implement BigInteger In Java?

When primitive data types can’t help you Java has some special classes to rescue you. One such condition arises when you’re dealing with large numbers which cannot be contained in Primitive data types such as int and long. One might use String data type to overcome this problem. But, if we want to perform arithmetic operations on the given number this method falls short. In this post, we will discuss how can we overcome this problem with the help of BigInteger in Java

Following pointers will be covered in this article,

• Classes and Objects
• BigInteger Class
• Constructors
• Methods of BigInteger class

So let us get started with this article,

BigInteger In Java

Classes and Objects

Before getting started with the BigInteger class it is essential to understand the fundamentals of Object Oriented Programming. Classes and objects form the core of OOPs. These are powerful concepts used frequently when dealing with languages that support OOPs. So. Let’s go through these concepts and develop a brief understanding of their working.

The main ideas behind OOPs are code modularity and code reusability. These ideas are implemented with the help of class and object. A class is a place where a user can set the behavior and properties of its instances. You can also consider a class as a prototype of the objects belonging to that car.

For example

Let’s consider a class named ‘Dog’. Now, if we think of a dog we can say that all dogs have some common properties such as color, legs, tail, ears, etc. and behaviors such as walking, shaking the tail, barking, etc. we can write all these common properties as attributes and behaviors as methods in our class ‘Dog’. Now, every instance of this class will have the same properties and behaviors. Now, we can create as many objects as we want and use the functionalities mentioned in the class. This makes the code modular and reusable.

Classes are also called user-defined data types and are used when the functionality that we are trying to achieve is not fulfilled by using primitive data types. BigInteger class is an example of that. Let’s study this example in and out.

Let us take a look at the next point of this BigInteger In Java

BigInteger Class

At this point, we have enough knowledge of classes and objects to get started with the BigInteger class provided by Java. BigInteger class is a part of Java.math package and comes with various constructors. While creating objects of this class to store big numbers there is no upper limit for the number that can be stored. The only limitation is the memory available.

BigInteger class should only be used if ineluctable. As it grabs more memory compared to the primitive data types and you cannot do arithmetic operations using respective arithmetic operator, as Java does not support operator overloading.

Declaration

BigInteger Big;

Initialization

BigInteger Big2 = new BigInteger("124321098456719538751253254");

In the next section, we will discuss the constructors and methods of this class.

Now we would understand what are constructors,

BigInteger In Java: Constructors

Let’s have a look at the various constructors provided by the class BigInteger. More the number of constructors available more the number of ways to create objects of class BigInteger. The important thing to keep in mind is that the constructors don’t have a return type and they do not return anything.

There are a total of 5 types of constructors and are used according to the situations and the parameters available with us. To understand the concept we will be using the 4th constructor from the table.

Next bit in this BigInteger In Java article is,

Methods of BigInteger Class

As we discussed earlier, every class has different attributes and methods which are common to all instances of that class. While doing arithmetic operations with the help of BigInteger class use of arithmetic operators is of no use. Hence to conduct arithmetic operations we need to use BigInteger class methods.

The methods mentioned in the above table are the methods which are used most of the time while dealing with the BigInteger class. To look at the complete list provided by the BigInteger class go through the official BigInteger class docs provided by Oracle.

Example

After understanding OOPs concepts, BigInteger class, its constructors, and methods, now let’s consider an example and demonstrate the use of BigInteger class.

Let’s find the time taken by light to reach the nearest galaxy to earth i.e 2.4011019Km.

import java.math.BigInteger;
public class BiggInteger {
public static void main(String[] args) {
BigInteger Distance = new BigInteger("2401000000000000000000");
BigInteger SpeedofLight = new BigInteger("1080000000");
BigInteger Time = Distance.divide(SpeedofLight);
System.out.println("Time taken by light to reach the Andromeda Galaxy is " + Time + " hours");
}
}

Output:

Process finished with exit code = 0

Note- The above case is for example purpose. In reality, the answer may differ. Try different galaxies or stars and edit the code accordingly.

Thus we have come to an end of this article on ‘BigInteger in Java’. If you wish to learn more, check out the Java Training by Edureka, a trusted online learning company. Edureka’s Java J2EE and SOA training and certification course is designed to train you for both core and advanced Java concepts along with various Java frameworks like Hibernate & Spring.

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