I wrote: > The actual effective limit on NUMERIC is presently 10^128K, which is > probably enough to count the femtoseconds remaining until the heat death > of the universe, and then multiply that by the number of elementary > particles therein ;-). Should have done my research first. A little googling says that * The total number of particles in the universe has been variously estimated at numbers from 10^72 up to 10^87. * The time to the heat death of the universe has been estimated at 10^200 years (and if there's one significant digit in that exponent I'd be surprised...) So the product I fancifully mentioned would weigh in somewhere around 10^300, and thus be *well* within the capability of even the proposed restricted numeric format. regards, tom lane
