Question

First off, I’m doing this for myself so please don’t suggest “use GMP / xint / bignum” (if it even applies).

I’m looking for a way to convert large integers (say, OVER 9000 digits) into a int32 array of 2³² representations. The numbers will start out as base 10 strings.

For example, if I wanted to convert string a = "4294967300" (in base 10), which is just over INT_MAX, to the new base 2³² array, it would be int32_t b[] = {1,5}. If int32_t b[] = {3,2485738}, the base 10 number would be 3 * 2^32 + 2485738. Obviously the numbers I’ll be working with are beyond the range of even int64 so I can’t exactly turn the string into an integer and mod my way to success.

I have a function that does subtraction in base 10. Right now I’m thinking I’ll just do subtraction(char* number, "2^32") and count how many times before I get a negative number, but that will probably take a long time for larger numbers.

Can someone suggest a different method of conversion? Thanks.

EDIT
Sorry in case you didn’t see the tag, I’m working in C++

Answer 1

Assuming your bignum class already has multiplication and addition, it’s fairly simple:

 bignum str_to_big(char* str) {
     bignum result(0);
     while (*str) {
         result *= 10;
         result += (*str - '0');
         str = str + 1;
     }
     return result;
 }

Converting the other way is the same concept, but requires division and modulo

std::string big_to_str(bignum num) {
    std::string result;
    do {
        result.push_back(num%10);
        num /= 10;
    } while(num > 0);
    std::reverse(result.begin(), result.end());
    return result;
}

Both of these are for unsigned only.