Maximum and Minimum values for ints

Question

I am looking for minimum and maximum values for integers in python. For eg., in Java, we have Integer.MIN_VALUE and Integer.MAX_VALUE. Is there som

Answer 1

sys.maxsize is not the actually the maximum integer value which is supported. You can double maxsize and multiply it by itself and it stays a valid and correct value.

However, if you try sys.maxsize ** sys.maxsize, it will hang your machine for a significant amount of time. As many have pointed out, the byte and bit size does not seem to be relevant because it practically doesn't exist. I guess python just happily expands it's integers when it needs more memory space. So in general there is no limit.

Now, if you're talking about packing or storing integers in a safe way where they can later be retrieved with integrity then of course that is relevant. I'm really not sure about packing but I know python's pickle module handles those things well. String representations obviously have no practical limit.

So really, the bottom line is: what is your applications limit? What does it require for numeric data? Use that limit instead of python's fairly nonexistent integer limit.