> It could be the memory space available to hold the longest
> number is limited, and not particularly the recursive depth.
> Although I could be wrong, because I know little.

Saxon uses Java's BigInteger. Arithmetic performance will become impossibly
slow long before you hit the size limits on a BigInteger.

It appears to me that BigInteger doesn't really have a limit because
by increasing the memory, the calculation of even larger factorials
(larger than 10446) becomes possible with Saxon.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

-Regards
Rashmi