I can reproduce this with a number of BigDecimal inputs, but so far all of them have needed to be instantiated with Kernel#BigDecimal () using a string that is (a) in exponent notation with non-zero ...

Java does not have an operator for exponent. Furthermore, it's not in the standard library, you have to use Math. And to add insult to injury, you need to coerce an integer raised to a power back into ...