infinity comparison

John M McIntosh johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com
Fri Sep 17 18:16:57 UTC 2004


Seems to me if I recall VW had a package that introduced the concept of  
infinity, but
also a really large number but not infinity, and a really small number,  
but not zero for both
positive and negative...

On Sep 17, 2004, at 8:50 AM, Lex Spoon wrote:

> Okay, here's another useless discussion, following up the recent one
> about comparison of NaN's.  Try this in Squeak:
>
> 1000 factorial < Float infinity    "-->  false"
>
> This hydra just won't stay dead!
>
> And if this example seems silly, just think of all the algorithms that
> insert infinity's as initial values on paper, but for which C and Java
> programmers have to use some sort of sentinel value like -1.  There are
> some serious cool points are at stake here, if we can make it possible
> in our language to insert a plain old infinity.
>
> -Lex
>
>
>
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John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
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