ln3 Method - GetSize

Description: Get the size, in multi-precision digits, of the large number. The size is 1 relative. A size of zero indicates that the value of the large number is zero.; Note again that the size represents the number of multi-precision digits that are needed to represent the large number. The size of a multi-precision digit is platform dependent, but is usually 32-bits (an unsigned long).; Formally, let X be a large number, and m be the number of bits in a multi-precision digit (usually 32, as noted above). Then n = X.GetSize( ) such that (2^m)ⁿ < X < (2^m)^(n-1).

Signature: size_t GetSize( void ) const

Parameters: ( none )

Returns: ( size_t ) The number of multi-precision digits in the large number.

Example

The most typical use for this method is to iterate over the multi-precision digits of the large number. Here, we get the size of the large number, and use it as the limit of a for loop that prints each multi-precision digit:

ln X;
...
size_t digits = X.GetSize( );
for( size_t i=0 ; i<digits ; i++ )
    cout << "digit " << i << " = " << X.GetDigit( i ) << endl;