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

In Python integers will automatically switch from a fixed-size int representation into a variable width long representation once you pass the value sys.maxint, which is either 2³¹ - 1 or 2⁶³ - 1 depending on your platform. Notice the L that gets appended here:

>>> 9223372036854775807
9223372036854775807
>>> 9223372036854775808
9223372036854775808L

From the Python manual:

Numbers are created by numeric literals or as the result of built-in functions and operators. Unadorned integer literals (including binary, hex, and octal numbers) yield plain integers unless the value they denote is too large to be represented as a plain integer, in which case they yield a long integer. Integer literals with an 'L' or 'l' suffix yield long integers ('L' is preferred because 1l looks too much like eleven!).

Python tries very hard to pretend its integers are mathematical integers and are unbounded. It can, for instance, calculate a googol with ease:

>>> 10**100
10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000L