Q:

What program/language can I use to handle large numbers (over 10^300)

I'm trying to multiply together a set of numbers.
However, the programs I have tried (Excel, R, FreeMat) do not allow numbers above around 300 digits. This limits me to sets of a few hundred numbers at most.
What program can I use that isn't limited by the number of digits? And what size numbers can I realistically manipulate on a (high spec) home PC?
I'm not a programmer, however I can learn if this is the only way around it!

A:

Every computer algebra system for symbolic manipulations, for example Sage or Maxima
Some programming languages have built-in support, for example Python, Haskell and Ruby
GMP is a well-established library for C and C++

The size of numbers is limited by the memory of your PC (few GiB typically, thus a few billion digits are possible). Of course you should think about the question which kind of numbers you want to handle (integers, floating point numbers, fractions?).

