How to get biggest BigDecimal value
Looking at the source BigDecimal stores it as a BigInteger with a radix,
private BigInteger intVal;
private int scale;
and from BigInteger
/** All integers are stored in 2's-complement form.
63: * If words == null, the ival is the value of this BigInteger.
64: * Otherwise, the first ival elements of words make the value
65: * of this BigInteger, stored in little-endian order, 2's-complement form. */
66: private transient int ival;
67: private transient int[] words;
So the Largest BigDecimal would be,
ival = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
words = new int[Integer.MAX_VALUE];
scale = 0;
You can figure out how to set that. :P
[Edit] So just to calculate that, In binary that's,
(2^35)-2 1's (I think?)
in 2's complement
01111111111111111...until your RAM fills up.
Its an arbitrary precision class, it will get as large as you'd like until your computer runs out of memory.