"Lex Spoon" lex@cc.gatech.edu The only issue I can think of is that it adds three new global variables, but these seem like nice ones to have around, and these concepts actually are global to all code.
...... Adds globals variables Infinity, NegativeInfinity, and NaN. This makes all floats print out to something that is re-compilable" Why not just add Float class>> negativeInfinity ^Infinity negated to Float, and then make the floats in question print as (Float infinity) "not Infinity" (Float negativeInfinity) "not NegativeInfinity" (Float nan) "not NaN" or even just (Float infinity) (Float infinity negated) (Float nan) (Float nan negated)
Of course, I have to point out that NEITHER the change set in question NOR my proposed revision succeeds in the aim of making all floats print out as something that evaluates to a number with the same bit pattern, because there are 2*(2**53-1) NaN values. For that we'd need (Float nan: 'hex string') or something like that.
I really can't feel happy about adding three globals.
I'm especially unhappy about this because ANSI Smalltalk mandates *three* floating-point classes (FloatE, FloatD, and FloatQ) and *each* of them would want its own three global variables, because FloatE infinity (if ANSI had it) could not be the same object as FloatD infinity.
This is of particular interest because it's clear that Squeak _does_ have two floating-point types. There's "Float" and there's "element of a FloatArray". (Anyone else find it confusing that the elements of FloatArrays are not really Floats?) Float is roughly FloatD and FloarArray is roughly packed array of FloatE. If this were cleaned up by having FloatE class FloatD class (current Float) Float global, bound to FloatD FloatEArray class (current FloatArray) FloatDArray class then having globals for Infinity and NaN would really be a pain.