Support numbers larger than 9223372036854775807

[as-com]

9223372036854775807 is 2^63-1, which is the largest 64-bit integer. When you add 1 to it, strange things happen.

This is evident in my implementation of the Chudnovsky algorithm: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/48332222/. The project is currently broken for inputs 15 and above, because of this limitation.

A possible solution to this problem is to use a BigDecimal instead of an integer in variables. I found an implementation of BigDecimal in ActionScript 3 here: https://github.com/maurice/BigDecimal.as

[as-com]

Forum topic: http://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/91072/

[as-com]

Oh, as a comment, Scratch apparently switches over to floating point numbers, which I despise. I suggest that BigDecimal is used for all numbers, so the evils of floats don't confuse new Scratchers.

[as-com]

@TheLogFather, what do you think about this proposal?

[AndersBillLinden]

Wouldnt the performance be terrible then?

[as-com]

Scratch's performance is already pretty bad. 😄

I was thinking that Scratch should switch over to using BigDecimals when numbers get too big for floats to store accurately or whatever ActionScript voodoo it's using right now.

[AndersBillLinden]

No reason making it worse, I think.

[kaschm]

Hi @as-com, thanks for submitting this issue. Unfortunately, we don't see an easy fix for this, so we probably won't be able to deal with this. However - you might want to reach out to the people at Snap! (snap.berkeley.edu), who made a variant of Scratch that can tackle more advanced mathematical topics.