A. Murat Eren was browsing through the (open) source of a program called YUM (which, from what I can tell, has something to do with Linux, hot dogs, and a magical kitchen appliance called a "recipe maker") and sent in a little snippet from it. Now, there's nothing really wrong with the code. It's actually researched, written well, and commented. But none the less, I found it pretty entertaining ... 

symbols = ['',  # (none)
           'k', # kilo
           'M', # mega
           'G', # giga
           'T', # tera
           'P', # peta
           'E', # exa
           'Z', # zetta
           'Y'] # yotta

# ... snip ...

thresh = 999

depth = 0

while number > thresh:
    depth  = depth + 1
    number = number / 1024

# just in case someone needs more than 1000 yottabytes!
diff = depth - len(symbols) + 1

if diff > 0:
    depth = depth - diff
    number = number * thresh**depth

Yes, that's right, "just in case someone needs more than 1000 yottabytes!" Those of us lucky enough to have a terabyte are 1,000,000,000,000 times short of a yottabyte. In terms of Compact Discs Dual Layer DVDs, we'd need to build a stack high enough to reach the moon ... and back ... and there again ... (SNIP: 396 trips) ... and finally back again .... just to have a yottabyte worth of data. A stack of 3.5" floppy discs with 1,000 yottabytes would be tall enough to make it to the sun. 14 Million times. But still ... just in case ...

[Advertisement] BuildMaster allows you to create a self-service release management platform that allows different teams to manage their applications. Explore how!