• Full ANSI/C++ source code, with extensive comments and documentation

• Source is Windows, Unix, and 64-bit ready

• Support for Windows 7, 2008, 2003, XP

• STL (Standard Template Library) and MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) support

• Thorough online documentation and examples

Why Use the Base One Number Class?

Base One's Number Class is a general-purpose alternative to the built-in numeric data types of C++, with added safeguards against a variety of common (and not-so-common) errors. Whether you write programs for Windows, Linux, Unix, DOS, or any other platform, you can use our Number Class just as easily as the native C++ number types. If you have an existing application, conversion couldn't be easier. With a few localized changes to include our header files, huge applications can be made to support greatly enhanced precision simply by recompiling.

Comprehensive error handling

Even if your application doesn't require the highest level of precision, Base One's Number Class makes it easier to write reliable applications by adding convenient error-trapping features. This covers errors like Overflow, Divide by zero, Invalid sign, etc., which are not handled automatically by C++.

C++ provides only minimal facilities for detecting and handling errors that can occur in numeric arithmetic and conversion operations. This makes it necessary for programmers to take extra steps to be sure that certain errors, such as division by zero and overflow, can not occur. Otherwise, a program may crash or simply yield incorrect results when one of these exceptional conditions arises.

All too often obscure bugs result from failing to add adequate error checking logic. The Number Class provides additional capabilities for detecting and handling errors, so these details don't burden the programmer but they also don't get overlooked.

Division by zero

C++ also doesn't detect invalid attempts to divide a number by zero (unless you consider immediately crashing to be a form of error "detection"). This too is a type of error that the Number Class makes easy to trap and handle cleanly, again without a lot of extra code. The Number Class also detects attempts to raise 0 to a negative power.

Conversion errors

Another important category of errors is those that can occur when converting back and forth between different types of numeric and character representations. The limited error-handling features of C++'s conversion functions are greatly improved upon in the Base One Number Class. For example, Number Class conversions discriminate among many specific error types, such as invalid sign, missing digit, negative number converted to an unsigned data type, particular flavors of overflow, etc. You also have the choice of detecting errors either based on a return code or by raising an exception for which you can supply your own handler.

Bottom line: you are guaranteed to be warned if the number is too large to be stored or if a desired degree of accuracy (precision) can't be maintained. Using the Number Class prevents the silent destructiveness of overflow, which comes with all the C++ numeric data types.

But the main point is that numbers can be large - with many digits both to the left and to the right of the decimal point. Support for larger ranges of values avoids insidious arithmetic truncation, without any special effort dedicated to overflow error detection and handling.

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To learn more about the Base One Number Class:

• High-precision C++ arithmetic (.pdf)