Handling Big Integers in low-latency applications

Question

I'm writing an application in Java, and trying to get the best performance out of it. Currently it can handle 250,000 of a specific operation every second.

However, I discovered a bug. Due to the way this application works I have to take a number that is from the user input, that can be up to x,xxx,xxx,xxx and then to this I also have to add a timestamp in milliseconds.

Of course, I forgot about this and soon discovered that all of my values were negative.

Now, initially my thought was to just use BigIntegers, but will this not destroy the performance?

What is the best way to handle large integers in low latency applications.

"but will this not destroy the performance?" - we can't possibly tell, but you can. Run appropriate tests, and see. — Jon Skeet, Jun 01 '15 at 16:33

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

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There's no reason for BigInteger. I can see just 10 digits there, which means that it nearly fits in an int. A long gives you 9 more digits.

Look at Long.MAX_VALUE and similar constants so you know what you're doing. A millisecond timestamp in long will overflow on Sun Aug 17 07:12:55 GMT 292278994. That's not a typo.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

Community

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answered Jun 01 '15 at 23:17

maaartinus

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 01 '15 at 16:36

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you can use long for 10 digits.

Or, you can try java.math.BigInteger or java.math.BigDecimal.

answered Jun 01 '15 at 16:36

Med Besbes

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Handling Big Integers in low-latency applications

2 Answers2