I don't think there is any "sensible limit" which is big enough for everyone's needs, but low enough you won't blow out memory.
An 8 billion digit number is 2.5G? (Did I do my maths right?) All I need to do is shove 1,000 of those in a JSON array, and I'll cause an out-of-memory anyway.
On the other hand, any limit low enough that I can't blow up memory by making an array of 100K or so is going to be too low for some people (including me, I often make numbers of low-million numbers of digits).
Providing some method of putting a limit on seems sensible, but maybe just make a LimitedBigDecimal type, so then through the whole program there is a limit on how much memory BigDecimals can take up? (I haven't looked at the library in detail, sorry).
An 8 billion digit number is 2.5G? (Did I do my maths right?) All I need to do is shove 1,000 of those in a JSON array, and I'll cause an out-of-memory anyway.
On the other hand, any limit low enough that I can't blow up memory by making an array of 100K or so is going to be too low for some people (including me, I often make numbers of low-million numbers of digits).
Providing some method of putting a limit on seems sensible, but maybe just make a LimitedBigDecimal type, so then through the whole program there is a limit on how much memory BigDecimals can take up? (I haven't looked at the library in detail, sorry).