Why can Haskell handle very large numbers easily?

Question

Hugs> 94535^445
13763208823213770506960538876615156211048901640052821530697264247739998018468419032448277029434879827074549660094560167350418780006041435009085328         


        

Answer 1

Java has the notion of "Primitive Data Types" (which are the types that the processor supports) and those are different from all other Classes.

In Haskell, Int is a type like all other types, and therefore it was easily made a member of the Num and Integral typeclasses used in (^) ("(^) :: (Num a, Integral b) => a -> b -> a"). Another member of those typeclasses is Integer, which supports integers of all sizes (as long as you have enough memory for their digits).

In Java, you can use many "Big Numbers" libraries, but the operations for them won't use the infix operators you are used to, because those are only for "Primitive Types" in Java.