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1.0/0.0 has to be handled somehow. Yes, by raising an error [1]. Or whistling innocently and pretending it's not my code while leaving the room. handling it a

by andos 15y ago

1.0/0.0 has to be handled somehow. Yes, by raising an error [1]. Or whistling innocently and pretending it's not my code while leaving the room. handling it as "+infinity" has a 50/50 chance of being "correct" It has zero chance of being correct because infinity can never be the result of any arithmetic computation. Infinity is not a number. Infinity only appears as the result of evaluating limits, an operation which is not arithmetic. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGFPE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGFPE

marshray 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754-1985 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754-1985 The spec allows the programmer to decide if the various degenerate cases in arithmetic will raise a signal, or result in a special value which propagates through the rest of the calcuations (INF, NaN, etc.). Certainly there are times to prefer one over the other, but the facilities that were standardized back in the 80's are generally more than adequate for most uses. Whether or not your platform C compiler lets you access these settings in a convenient and portable way is another question however...:-)
- andos 15y ago
  As long as everybody decides consciously whether to propagate garbage or raise flags, the world is safe.
  - marshray 15y ago
    My policy is to prefer to signal or throw an exception. It's not something that can be accidentally ignored by an unconscious programmer.