Why doesn't `^` promote its arguments?

[heliosdrm]

Related, with full discusion of why Julia does as it does:

Julia messes up integer exponents?

I was using avogadro’s number in a calculation and couldn’t figure out why the results were not matching my matlab or python code… Turns out using integers as exponents gets you in trouble in Julia?They start off innocent but at higher powers, but really not that big for science (Avogadro’s number is very popular!!! as are many other constants…) julia> 10^1 10 julia> 10^2 100 julia> 10^5 100000 julia> 10^15 1000000000000000 julia> 10^20 7766279631452241920 julia> 10^16 10000000000000000 julia> …