Festeron (8/7/2008)
There are problems with the question, though.Why is @b-2 declared and never used?
Where is @b-17? Answer B cannot be correct
Yikes! You are right, "@b" shouldn't be in there and Answer B should read "@a-17...". Fortunately, it doesn't change the correct answer.
Answer A is not just a distraction, it's wrong to include the "=2^64" because you are deliberately misleading us. A much better A would have been "16^16 is out of range for the bigint datatype' which [in hindsight] is clearly not true.
Yes it is trying to mislead you by playing on the mistaken assumption that "^" is the exponent operator, just as the Title is. However, that is the whole point of the Question: it is a mistaken assumption and if you do not figure that out, you will come to the wrong conclusion.
And after all, (A) is an incorrect answer, whether it is incorrect for one reason or two (and both the same reason at that) doesn't really matter.
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