How to avoid overflow in expr. A * B - C * D

Question

I need to compute an expression which looks like: A*B - C*D, where their types are: signed long long int A, B, C, D; Each number can be really big (not

Answer 1

You could try breaking the equation into smaller components which don't overflow.

AB - CD
= [ A(B - N) - C( D - M )] + [AN - CM]

= ( AK - CJ ) + ( AN - CM)

    where K = B - N
          J = D - M

If the components still overflow you could break them into smaller components recursively and then recombine.