Why doesn't BigNumber.toString allow an arbitrary base?

Hello, I’m getting this error when using @ethersproject/bignumber

bigNumber.toString does not accept parameters (code=UNEXPECTED_ARGUMENT, version=bignumber/5.0.1)

It’s coming from this toString() override where the comment indicates this is intentionally not supported: https://github.com/ethers-io/ethers.js/blob/d817416bae2fbc7adb8391fd038613241b7ab8ba/packages/bignumber/src.ts/bignumber.ts#L186

I’m wondering why is this not supported.

On the surface it looks like ethers could pipe the base and padding parameters to the underlying BN implementation, like so:

    toString(base: any, padding: any): string {
        return toBN(this).toString(base || 10, padding);
    }

What am I missing?

[mirceanis]

I’m closing it since there was no time to dig deeper. I’ll reopen once I run into this again.

[ricmoo]

Cool cool. I’ll keep it open.

Keep in mind ethers exposes absolutely zero parts of BN.js. It is not meant to be compatible with BN.js and BigNumber should be thought of as its own implementation of a big number library. There is no way to use any part of BN.js from any export in ethers. 😃