How to compute an exponent in matlab without getting inf?

Question

The title says it all: I want to calculate an exponent in matlab with big numbers, but I get overflow and it just returns infinity.

>> 100^1000

ans =
         


        

Answer 1

Working with 64bit floating point arithmetic, 100^1000 is inf because it is larger than the largest possible value. If the symbolic math toolbox is available, use vpa or sym to work with large numbers:

sym('100^1000')

or

vpa('100^1000')