[PD-dev] [float infinity] and [float -infinity]

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Tue, 31 Jan 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> Apparently Pd is not alone in its lack of IEEE 754 compliance, python uses the
> OS-specific values, which are not always the same:
> http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0754.html

BTW GridFlow isn't IEEE-compliant either. It was designed for use with 
integer numbers, and the integer format doesn't have infinities nor NaN, 
so, with integers, division by 0 gives an ordinary integer. The floats of 
GridFlow follow what the ints do rather than IEEE.

> Why?  I think this would be confused with [max] and [min].  I think that
> we can make things close to IEEE style with much less work by doing
> [float infinity], etc..  Plus IEEE names are "PosInf", "NegInf", and
> "NaN", so [float infinity] and [float -infinity] and [float
> not_a_number] are obviously different.

Many languages support IEEE except for the naming of the values. That is,
the relationships between the different floats are compatible with IEEE,
but it's just that the names of the three special values aren't the same
as in IEEE or aren't available (so they have to be generated by 1/0 -1/0
0/0 instead).

> I am just discussing the options.  I said I supported it, and that's
> what I mean.  I don't need an interpreter on the list :-P. 

Well, now I'm really confused.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada