On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 2:08 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncogh...@gmail.com> wrote: > Jesus Cea wrote: >> But IEEE 754 was created by pretty clever guys and sure they had a >> reason for define things in the way they are. Probably we are missing >> something. > > Yes, this is where their "implementable in a hardware circuit" focus > comes in. They were primarily thinking of a floating point > representation where the 32/64 bits are *it* - you can't have "multiple > NaNs" because you don't have the bits available to describe them.
I'm not so sure about this: standard 64-bit binary IEEE 754 doubles allow for 2**53-2 different nans (2**52-2 signaling nans, 2**52 quiet nans): anything with bit pattern (msb to lsb) x1111111 1111xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx is an infinity or a nan, and there are only 2 infinities. Mark _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
