Just wondering what people think is the best language to use for programming with Big Numbers.

My preferred programming language is VB, but I am finding it increasingly difficult to solve many of the programming challenges, especially those involving large numbers. The main problem seems to be that simple recurring programs and programs involving Big Integers are very slow, and there seems to be less information available on the Internet than many other languages. I have recently started learning C++, but before I get too deeply involved with this language, I was hoping to hear a few opinions.

That's quite a tricky question. I try not to get involved with VB much, so I'd probably say if you just need arbitrary precision numbers for some simple and quick calculations the easiest to use might be PHP and its bcmath functions, closely followed by Java's BigInteger / BigDecimal handling.
If whatever you're trying to implement both requires 'large' numbers and speed and / or is borderlining on being number theoretically evil (what an expression) I'd strongly recommend C/C++ in conjunction with the fine NTL library, providing arbitrary precision integers, real numbers and a whole lot of other nifty features.
Be warned though, it takes some time to get used to NTL.
Just my 2 cents.
regards, Hive

for big number calculations i use PHP: bcmod, bcdiv, bdadd, bcsub, bcmul,...
i solved kcta1&2, number crunching with php and this functions

I use C++ with the GMP lib (an arbitrary precission math library). I could use php too, but it's so slow for that puposes

I like C

To those that use C++, is there any inherant advantage to using an object orientated langauage with these things? The reason I ask is I hate OO with a passion ever since doing Java at uni a few years back and having 5 different source files when 1 C file would do the same job

My area is engineering not programming so sorry if its a dumb question!!!

cheers..

I use C++ with the librery mapm, its free but i dont remember the link....

Tolito

@Trav,

I use C++, an OO programming language, but I don't really use the OO feature on all my progs, so, in most cases, it's the same that using C. And... I think the OO doesn't give more facilities to the bignums purpose.

Saludos!

C++ is what I use. C works pretty good too.

hum ?

Congratulations, the best contribution so far, Potti.