On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 01:12:52PM -0700, Luke Palmer wrote:
> > From: "Tanton Gibbs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 15:00:57 -0500
> >
> > > > Inf - Inf NaN
> > >
> > > I'd expect 0.
> >
> > I'd expect Inf
>
> Which Inf is bigger? Inf, or Inf?
>
> You can't know, so it's NaN.
Maybe I'm just wired wrong, but Inf is the same size as Inf (since
they are the same "value") To me "Inf" is a textual representation of
a value that's larger than all other values. So ...
Inf == Inf # true
Inf != Inf # false
Inf > Inf # false
Inf < Inf # false
Inf - Inf == 0 # true
Inf + Inf == Inf # true
But, I'm willing to be educated on the subject. I don't ever use
infinities in code now and I don't think I'm likely to (except perhaps
in lazy list generation).
The only infinities of varying sizes that I know of are the alephs,
and they don't apply here.
> It's actually
>
> { 0 , $P < 1
> $P ** Inf { 1 , $P == 1
> { Inf, $P > 1
>
> But perhaps we could forgo documenting any of the power cases and
> leave it to common sense.
We can't leave *anything* to common sense because one person's common
sense may be different from another's. (i.e., there's no such thing
as "common sense" :)
-Scott
--
Jonathan Scott Duff
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
