5.2 Integers

Integers are numbers like – 4, 0, and –123. They do not include fractions such as 2/3 nor numbers with decimal points such as 2.71828. Unlike many programming languages, where an integer’s size is limited by the so-called hardware “word size,” a Python integer can be as large as your system memory can support. The type of a Python integer is int. [PIW]

If you don’t need to use negative integers, the largest hardware integer that a 64-bit processor can represent is usually 2⁶⁴ – 1. (Here, 64 bits is the word size of that processor.)

2**64 - 1

18446744073709551615

The symbol ** is the exponentiation or “power” operator. It raises the number on its left to the power on its right.

Exercise 5.1

Check the maximum signed integer on your system by issuing

import sys

sys.maxsize

This is 2ⁿ –...