Is there a method that calculates a factorial in Java?
Bare naked factorials are rarely needed in practice. Most often you will need one of the following:
1) divide one factorial by another, or
2) approximated floating-point answer.
In both cases, you'd be better with simple custom solutions.
In case (1), say, if x = 90! / 85!, then you'll calculate the result just as x = 86 * 87 * 88 * 89 * 90, without a need to hold 90! in memory :)
In case (2), google for "Stirling's approximation".
Apache Commons Math has a few factorial methods in the MathUtils class.
public class UsefulMethods {
public static long factorial(int number) {
long result = 1;
for (int factor = 2; factor <= number; factor++) {
result *= factor;
}
return result;
}
}
Big Numbers version by HoldOffHunger:
public static BigInteger factorial(BigInteger number) {
BigInteger result = BigInteger.valueOf(1);
for (long factor = 2; factor <= number.longValue(); factor++) {
result = result.multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(factor));
}
return result;
}
I don't think it would be useful to have a library function for factorial. There is a good deal of research into efficient factorial implementations. Here is a handful of implementations.