While making a list of the total number of possible unique values per bit length, I had a problem: most online calculators will omit digits when you have too many digits in the result of the calculation!
For example, if you ask Google what is "2 to the power of 64" or 2^64(How to Read Math), the answer is going to be 1.8446744e+19. As we both know from grade school, that isn't a number. Numbers don't have e's in them. What is this?
This is a scientific notation. It means the actual number is what comes before e+ times 10 to the power of what comes after e+.
In other words, 1.8446744*10^19. That's right, scientists are so smart that they're going to make everyone confused just to save typing 2 characters!
This notation is of course worthless because I want the calculator to tell me the whole number. There is no way the answer is 18446744000000000000 with that many zeroes. The calculator is omitting the rest, the most insignificant digits. Just because a digit is the least significant that doesn't mean it's completely insignificant. In this case, it significates a lot to me.
Some online calculators that I found through Google also did the same thing, so for a while I thought that this was impossible. In hindsight, I could have just typed 2**64 in Python, but then I'd have to copy the result off the terminal, or use some piping to get the result. There has to be better a way.
Thankfully, Wolfram|Alpha solves the problem. I can just ask it what is 2^64, and it actually shows all the digits. You can see for yourself:
It also worked with 2^4096, although I had to keep clicking "more digits" like a maniac a few times until it gave me all the digits. But it did give me all the digits.
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