I would like to implement a BigInt class which will be able to handle really big numbers. I want only to add and multiply numbers, however the class should also handle negative numbers.

I wanted to represent the number as a string, but there is a big overhead with converting string to int and back for adding. I want to implement addition as on the high school, add corresponding order and if the result is bigger than 10, add the carry to next order.

Then I thought that it would be better to handle it as a array of unsigned long long int and keep the sign separated by bool. With this I'm afraid of size of the int, as C++ standard as far as I know guarantees only that int < float < double. Correct me if I'm wrong. So when I reach some number I should move in array forward and start adding number to the next array position.

Is there any data structure that is appropriate or better for this? Thanks in advance.