On Jul 10, 2009, at 12:24 PM, Sean Devlin wrote:
>
> A quick java program:
>
> public static void main(String[] args) {
> System.out.println(1.0/0.0);
> }
>
> Infinity
>
>
> On Jul 10, 11:08 am, John Harrop <jharrop...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is odd:
>> user=> (/ 1.0 0.0)
>> #<CompilerException java.lang.ArithmeticException: Divide by zero
>> (NO_SOURCE_FILE:0)>
>>
>> Shouldn't it be Double/POSITIVE_INFINITY?
I think there's still room for an argument here, if anyone wants to
have one.
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/10/infinity_is_not_a_number.php
I'm not convinced that x/0 is arithmetically infinity thanks to Mark's
blog post there and it sure bugs me when I do something stupid and get
Infinity back instead of an error. It's like a timebomb in my code,
concealing where the real mistake was. I do like having the constant
there for doing algorithms that depend on it (Dijkstra's SSSP comes to
mind) but I think x/0 is an error (unless it's 0/0).
—
Daniel Lyons
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