c8

c8 (calculate) is designed as an easy-to-use arbitrary precision (big number) maths library that has no dependencies other than the standard C++ libraries provided with gcc or clang.

The design of c8 emphasizes ease of use, but it is intended to be used in high performance applications. Comprehensible software should not have to be intrinsically slow!

c8 provides supports for three primary classes of numbers:

• c8::natural - provides natural numbers (between zero and +infinity)
• c8::integer - provides integers (between -infinity and +infinity)
• c8::rational - provides rational numbers (all ratios between -infinity and +infinity)

Each class supports functions to construct objects from, and to export object values to, standard C++ value types.

Between the three classes it's possible to represent all the interesting numbers that a computer can directly represent, since floating point numbers are a subset of the set of rational numbers. By using rationals instead of floating point it's also much easier to avoid some types of computational error.