Factorial of a large number in Java BigInteger

Upasana | October 18, 2020 | 1 min read | 374 views

Primitive integer is of 4 bytes signed type in Java, so can hold max value of 2147483647. If any calculation requires to store a larger number than this, Java provides BigInteger class to handle that scenario.

BigInteger can theoretically hold an arbitrary-precision integer value limited by your computer memory. Thus BigInteger is an ideal candidate for calculating factorial of a large number.

BigInteger Documentation

Immutable arbitrary-precision integers. All operations behave as if BigIntegers were represented in two’s-complement notation (like Java’s primitive integer types). BigInteger provides analogues to all of Java’s primitive integer operators, and all relevant methods from java.lang.Math.

Additionally, BigInteger provides operations for modular arithmetic, GCD calculation, primality testing, prime generation, bit manipulation, and a few other miscellaneous operations.

Factorial Calculation

import java.math.BigInteger;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        BigInteger factorial = BigInteger.ONE;

        int n = 100;

        for (int i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
            factorial = factorial.multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(i));
        }

        System.out.println("factorial = " + factorial);
    }
}

Result will be something like this -

factorial = 93326215443944152681699......

The same program in Kotlin will look like below:

Factorial - Kotlin version

import java.math.BigInteger

fun factorial(num: BigInteger): BigInteger {
    var factorial = BigInteger.ONE
    var i = BigInteger.ONE
    while (i <= num) {
        factorial = factorial.multiply(i)
        i = i.add(BigInteger.ONE)
    }
    return factorial
}