It only means that in some cases. Consider if you are writing code that places items in a grid, and you support Inf as a grid coordinate meaning "not on the grid" which might be represented differently or which might place it at whatever edge of the grid is relevant (without forcing you to know the size of the grid, so it's more useful in a general library).
There's no "think simple" that covers all the use cases. And "if it's not think simple, then remove it" means you do extra work for no good reason except to make the documentation happy. On Fri, Sep 28, 2018 at 6:46 PM ToddAndMargo <toddandma...@zoho.com> wrote: > On 9/28/18 10:37 AM, Brandon Allbery wrote: > > We're going to have a problem if "infinity" is not allowed in the > > presence of some programmers. "All values" can mean too many things in > > too many situations. And I don't think using * works here, quite, > > precisely because it can mean too many things. > > Agreed. > > I think the issue is with the wording of Inf: > > https://docs.perl6.org/type/Num#index-entry-Inf_%28definition%29-Inf > The value Inf is an instance of Num and represents value that's > too large to represent in 64-bit double-precision floating > point number > > Looking at > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity > Infinity (symbol: ∞) is a concept describing something > without any bound or larger than any natural number. > > "without any bound" is what Inf is being used for here. > I see it as "larger than any natural number". So I > am probably the one at fault. > > When I read the manual, Perl Speak over rules common speak. > So I was taking Inf's Perl defination literally. > > Proposed change for your criticism: > > The value Inf (Infinity) represents "without bound" or > "no limit" (meaning "all possible values") when used > as an argument. > > Inf when used as an instance of Num and represents a > value that's too large to represent in 64-bit double-precision > floating point number > > What do you think? > > -T > -- brandon s allbery kf8nh allber...@gmail.com
