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I think IEEE doubles can represent up to 53 bit integers exactly. (Someone here will know if that's true.)



Gah, the website ruined what I was typing. I meant 2 to the power of 100. Which is a 100 bit integer, and certainly not correctly calculated in JavaScript.


While your general point is correct, the details aren't. Powers of 2 are represented exactly in floating point (for any number, only the 53 most significant bits can be stored). So 2^100 + 1 is an example of something that's non-representable in JS.


We could have a philosophical debate about what number a finite precision representation represents when you exceed its precision. But on a practical level, if you print it, what do you get? An exact integer, or a floating point representation?




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