What is the equivalent of the Java BigDecimal class in C#?

C# Problem Overview

BigDecimal is a class in the java.math package that has a lot of benefits for handling big numbers of a certain scale. Is there an equivalent class or data type in c# with this feature.

C# Solutions

Solution 1 - C#

Just recently I also needed an arbitrary precision decimal in C# and came across the idea posted here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/4524254/804614

I then completed the draft to support all basic arithmetic and comparison operators, as well as conversions to and from all typical numerical types and a few exponential methods, which I needed at that time.

It certainly is not comprehensive, but very functional and almost ready-to-use. As this is the result of one night coding, I can not assure that this thing is bug free or entirely exact, but it worked great for me. Anyway, I want to publish it here because I did not find any other way to use arbitrary precision decimals in C# without the need to include massive librarys (mostly not even .net, but wrappers to c++), which come with all kinds of unnecessary stuff.

The basic idea is to build a custom floating-point type with an arbitrary large mantissa using the BigInteger type of .NET 4.0 and a base 10 exponent (Int32).

If you find bugs/inaccuracies, have suggestions or anything constructive, please feel free to directly edit my post or leave a comment so I may improve the answer.

I'm not entirely sure if this is the best spot to place this thing, but this is one of the top questions on SO about this topic and I really want to share my solution. ;)

EDIT: I moved the implementation to GitHubGist: https://gist.github.com/JcBernack/0b4eef59ca97ee931a2f45542b9ff06d

Solution 2 - C#

C# only has BigInteger built it (in .NET framework 4).

Is decimal enough precision for your task? It's a 128-bit number that can hold values in the range ±1.0 × 10⁻²⁸ to ±7.9 × 10²⁸.

Solution 3 - C#

There's a C# library called BigNum that does what you're looking for, and in some cases has additional functionality.

For example, it has a square root function, which BigDecimal doesn't have:

PrecisionSpec precision = new PrecisionSpec(1024, PrecisionSpec.BaseType.BIN);
BigFloat bf = new BigFloat(13, precision);
bf.Sqrt();
Console.WriteLine(bf.ToString());

Wikipedia has a list of other such libraries at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrary-precision_arithmetic#Libraries

Sources:

The BigNum library was originally hosted at http://www.fractal-landscapes.co.uk/bigint.html, but that site has been down since 2012. (And then came back up at some point).
You can find an archive of the site at http://web.archive.org/web/20110721173046/http://www.fractal-landscapes.co.uk/bigint.html.
There's a copy of the source code at http://www.mediafire.com/file/6axoicc6iszp4sg/BigNum.zip/file

Solution 4 - C#

Well, apart from using third-party libraries with support of the BigDecimal (if they exist), there are no easy workarounds. The most easy way, as far as i am concerned is to take a decimal implementation( from mono for example) and to rewrite it using the BigInteger type. Internally, in mono's implementation, decimal type is composed from three integers. So i don't think that would be hard to implement. I am not sure about efficiency though. You should first however consider using standard decimal type as codeka mentioned.

Solution 5 - C#

Deveel Math

GitHub:

https://github.com/deveel/deveel-math

Author GitHub:

Antonello Provenzano

Support:

BigComplex
BigDecimal
BigMath
Rational
...

How to Install It

From the NuGet Package Management console, select the project where the library will be installed and type the following command

PM> Install-Package dmath

Solution 6 - C#

This may not have been an option when the question was originally posted, but one really easy way to use a BigDecimal in your C# code is to install the IKVM.NET package via NuGet:

PM> Install-Package IKVM

Then do exactly as you would in Java:

using System;
using java.math;

namespace BigDecimalDemo
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            int n = int.Parse(args[0]);
            Console.WriteLine(Factorial(n));
        }

        static BigDecimal Factorial(int n)
        {
            return n == 1
                ? BigDecimal.ONE
                : Factorial(n - 1).multiply(new BigDecimal(n));
        }
    }
}

Depending on how far you go with IKVM there can be the occasional interop issue to stumble through but in my experience it usually works great for simple stuff like this.

Solution 7 - C#

You can also use the Math.Gmp.Native NuGet package that I wrote. Its source code is available on GitHub, and documentation is available here. It exposes to .NET all of the functionality of the GMP library which is known as a highly-optimized arbitrary-precision arithmetic library.

Arbitrary-precision floating-point numbers are represented by the mpf_t type. Operations on these floating-point numbers all begin with the mpf_ prefix. For examples, mpf_add or mpf_cmp. Source code examples are given for each operation.

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Radi	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - C#	Gigo	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - C#	Dean Harding	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - C#	RedGreenCode	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - C#	n535	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - C#	TUPUNCO	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - C#	toddprater	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - C#	RobertBaron	View Answer on Stackoverflow