Exponents to higher powers of 10 resulting in missing values

[Jan Hegewald]

Hi Statalisters,
I've encountered problem in Stata 14.1 that I cannot explain, and I haven't been able to find any posts or Stata literature regarding this problem. I have a formula to generate a new variable that works perfectly until I get to higher powers of 10. At higher values, Stata gives me a missing value. The first time this happens is when I try to raise 10 to the power of 320 within the formula. I can demonstrate this with the display function:

display 10^(320)

No answer appears.
Please, can anyone explain this and/or recommend a work-around?

Best wishes,
Jan

[Nick Cox]

Documented limits.

creturn list

di c(maxdouble)

https://www.stata.com/manuals/pcreturn.pdf

The only work-around I know is to convert to a problem in logarithms.

[David Kantor]

10^307 is about the upper limit for a double-type value.

See help datatypes

Also, when you wrote "No answer appears", I believe that you actually did get a response; it is a missing value -- a period.

HTH
--David