Ruby max integer

Question

I need to be able to determine a systems maximum integer in Ruby. Anybody know how, or if it\'s possible?

Answer 1

In ruby Fixnums are automatically converted to Bignums.

To find the highest possible Fixnum you could do something like this:

class Fixnum
 N_BYTES = [42].pack('i').size
 N_BITS = N_BYTES * 8
 MAX = 2 ** (N_BITS - 2) - 1
 MIN = -MAX - 1
end
p(Fixnum::MAX)

Shamelessly ripped from a ruby-talk discussion. Look there for more details.