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

To deal with large numbers there is also the class High Precision Float, with which the result can be achieved by writing

a = hpf(100);
b = hpf(1000);
c = a^b;

which gives c = 1.e2000. A call to struct(c) provides informations on how the number is internally stored.

struct(c)

ans = 

NumberOfDigits: [64 4]
   DecimalBase: 4
          Base: 10000
       Numeric: 0
          Sign: 1
      Exponent: 2001
        Migits: [1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0]