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Have you ever tried to work with really large numbers in JavaScript, only to run into annoying precision errors? If you’ve dealt with cryptocurrency values, date calculations involving timestamps, or any application that requires precise representations of enormous integers, you know the struggles.
Fortunately, modern JavaScript now has a solution in the form of the BigInt data type and its handy operator (n). This lets you easily create and operate on arbitrarily large integers with perfect precision. Let’s dive in and learn how to use this power feature!
What is BigInt?
Before ES2020 (ES11), JavaScript could only safely represent integers between -(2⁵³ — 1) and (2⁵³ — 1). This range is limited to 64-bit floating point precision. Any integer outside that massive-but-still-finite range would start getting rounded and producing inaccurate values.
The BigInt type is an arbirtrary-precision integer data type that can represent integers of any size, both positive and negative. It bypasses the previous 64-bit limitation, letting you work with truly enormous (or tiny) numbers while maintaining full precision.
