[seqfan] Re: Sequences with very large entries.

[Neil Sloane]

I don't think we need to put a hard limit on the size of numbers in b-files.

In these days of "big data", I think we can be flexible.

It may be that some of the display commands (such as "graph")
will fail if the numbers get too large, but I don't think we should worry
about that.

This was due to restrictions on how large numbers the R language
could handle, but hopefully that has changed
in the ten or 15 years since we first wrote the "graph" program.

I feel the same about the number of terms that are displayed in the DATA
lines.
The old limit of a couple of hundred characters was imposed because the
data was stored on punched cards! I think we can be more flexible now.

We probably do need a limit, but it should be a lot more than 260
characters,
and we should not be very strict about enforcing it.

As for the limits on the size of b-files (or a-files), again
we should be very flexible. I find that I very often need more terms
than are in the b-files when I'm trying to understand a sequence.

Best regards
Neil

Neil J. A. Sloane, President, OEIS Foundation.
11 South Adelaide Avenue, Highland Park, NJ 08904, USA.
Also Visiting Scientist, Math. Dept., Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ.
Phone: 732 828 6098; home page: http://NeilSloane.com
Email: njasloane at gmail.com


On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 1:59 AM, Sidney Cadot <sidney at jigsaw.nl> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Page https://oeis.org/wiki/User:Charles_R_Greathouse_IV/Format gives a
> strong recommendation that numbers in b-file content lines not exceed
> 1000 digits.
>
> There are currently 344 sequences that do not meet this
> recommendation; some by a very large margin. For example, these are
> the sequences that contain single numbers in excess of 100,000 digits:
>
> A226050 max digits too large: 465250
> A226051 max digits too large: 415167
> A005588 max digits too large: 400663
> A226052 max digits too large: 374645
> A226053 max digits too large: 218798
> A226049 max digits too large: 211068
> A226058 max digits too large: 165234
>
> Would it be useful to have a hard limit for this?
>
> Regards Sidney
>
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