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Blog Entry: What Do You Get If You Multiply Six By Nine?

2005 September 11, 01:57 PM

As everyone knows, the late Douglas Adams, in his Hitchhikers' series, notes the answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything is 42. He also speculates the great question itself might be "what do you get if you multiply six by nine"? (since this question was discovered by randomly picking home-made Scrabble tiles [which obviously don't follow the letter distribution of real Scrabble tiles (eg, 4 y's)], it IS speculative and not definitive). The obvious joke is that 6 times 9 isn't 42 (unless you do the math in base 13, of course), but it got me to thinking. If you multiply 6 by 9 in various programming languages, you get a variety of answers, depending on whether 6 and 9 are treated as integers, strings, floats, etc. For example, "6" (string) times (using "*") 9 (integer) yields the string "666666666" (which is 666*1001001, hmmm) in some languages, the integer 54 in others, and an error in others. A lot of people have strong feelings about which is the "correct" answer, and programming language debates are often called "holy wars" because of how they can heat up. When computer programmers are finally in power, it would ironic (though unlikely) if people went to war, ultimately over the answer to "what do you get if you multiply six by nine". Perhaps Douglas Adams, in his infinite wisdom, was telling us that we're all wrong (since the answer is 42), and shouldn't fight over it... perhaps Douglas Adams was a far greater visionary than people imagined... perhaps it's time for my medication.