BigInt in Scala

One of the best examples of why it is so great to use Scala for API design is BigInt. Using BigInt in Java is a real headache because of the limitations of Java with regards to API design. Scala in comparison makes using BigInt no different than using Ints (with execution that there is not a BigInt literal).

1. // BigInt objects can be created from ints
2. scala> val x = BigInt(1500)
3. x: BigInt = 1500
5. // or longs
6. scala> val y = BigInt(8839200231L)
7. y: BigInt = 8839200231
9. // or strings
10. scala> val z = BigInt("1234566789008723457802308972345723470589237507")
11. z: BigInt = 1234566789008723457802308972345723470589237507
13. // then thanks to scala you can multiply/divide/add/subtract etc...
14. // as if it was a Scala literal
15. scala> x * y * z
16. res0: BigInt = 16368874569886254973831932331037537269641764816982396175500
18. // by importing implicits you can also directly multiply big ints with integers and longs
19. // however remember to put the big in first so that the int is converted to big int
20. // because you cannot do Int * BigInt.  It must be BigInt * Int
21. scala> import BigInt._
22. import BigInt._
24. scala> x * y * z * 124
25. res1: BigInt = 2029740446665895616755159609048654621435578837305817125762000