NAME Math::GMP - High speed arbitrary size integer math SYNOPSIS use Math::GMP; my $n = new Math::GMP 2; $n = $n ** (256*1024); $n = $n - 1; print "n is now $n\n"; DESCRIPTION Math::GMP is designed to be a drop-in replacement both for Math::BigInt and for regular integer arithmetic. Unlike BigInt, though, Math::GMP uses the GNU gmp library for all of its calculations, as opposed to straight Perl functions. This results in a speed increase of anywhere from 5 to 30 times. The downside is that this module requires a C compiler to install -- a small tradeoff in most cases. A Math::GMP object can be used just as a normal numeric scalar would be -- the module overloads the normal arithmetic operators to provide as seamless an interface as possible. However, if you need a perfect interface, you can do the following: use Math::GMP qw(:constant); $n = 2 ** (256 * 1024); print "n is $n\n"; This would fail without the ':constant' since Perl would use normal doubles to compute the 250,000 bit number, and thereby overflow it into meaninglessness (smaller exponents yield less accurate data due to floating point rounding). BUGS As of version 1.0, Math::GMP is mostly compatible with Math::BigInt. There are some slight incompatibilities, such as output of positive numbers not being prefixed by a '+' sign. This is intentional. The install process of the gmp library is rather contrived. This needs fixing and testing on various platforms. AUTHOR Chip Turner , based on Math::BigInt by Mark Biggar and Ilya Zakharevich.