how do I show 12 numbers from a huge number?

[jefsummers]

Reviving this old thread, after about 10 days of waiting I still had no answer so I broke the problem apart to see where the slowdown is. It's in the conversion from integer to string. I get the integer answer in less than 1 second. But, it's a huge integer. Conversion to a string so I can display it or write it to a file takes forever.

import datetime as dt
start = dt.datetime.now()
target = 2**34
alpha = 1<<target
stop = dt.datetime.now()
print(start, stop)
input("Calculated value: ")
start = dt.datetime.now()
outstr = str(alpha)
stop = dt.datetime.now()
print(start, stop)
input("Converted to string: ")
start = dt.datetime.now()
with open('c:\\Users\\summersj\\bignum.txt', 'w') as file : 
    file.write(outstr)
stop = dt.datetime.now()
print(f"Wrote to file {start} {stop}")

Output:
2019-09-24 10:15:24.725485 2019-09-24 10:15:25.651044
Calculated value: