Why does Java think that the product of all numbers from 10 to 99 is 0?

Question

The following block of codes gives the output as 0.

public class HelloWorld{

    public static void main(String []args){
        int product = 1;
        fo         


        

Answer 1

It is an integer overflow.

The int data type is 4 bytes, or 32 bits. Therefore, numbers larger than 2^(32 - 1) - 1 (2,147,483,647) cannot be stored in this data type. Your numerical values will be incorrect.

For very large numbers, you will want to import and use the class java.math.BigInteger:

BigInteger product = BigInteger.ONE;
for (long i = 10; i < 99; i++) 
    product = product.multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(i));
System.out.println(product.toString());

NOTE: For numerical values that are still too large for the int data type, but small enough to fit within 8 bytes (absolute value less than or equal to 2^(64 - 1) - 1), you should probably use the long primitive.

HackerRank's practice problems (www.hackerrank.com), such as the Algorithms practice section, (https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/algorithms/warmup) include some very good large-number questions that give good practice about how to think about the appropriate data type to use.