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It's actually part of some cryptic and ancient standard and is common for nearly all languages nowadays. I never cared about it very much, but here's the post o
by klibertp 13y ago
It's actually part of some cryptic and ancient standard and is common for nearly all languages nowadays. I never cared about it very much, but here's the post on NaN semantics from someone who apparently designed the standard:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1565164/what-is-the-rationale-for-all-comparisons-returning-false-for-ieee754-nan-values http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1565164/what-is-the-ratio...
- munificent 13y ago> cryptic and ancient standard Cryptic and ancient?! IEEE 754 is the behavior implemented by the chip in the computer you're using to browser HN with right now.
- saraid216 13y ago"In current and common use" is not actually the opposite of "cryptic and ancient".
- sitkack 13y agoI get your point, but.... Ancient it is not, and old isn't bad. Lots of deep thinking went into IEEE-754, http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/ieee754status/754story.html http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/ieee754status/754story.ht... calculating with computers is hard work.