Re: [Chicken-hackers] CR: Division by inexact zero should return infinity/nan

[John Cowan]

Alaric Snell-Pym scripsit:

> Dividing by an inexact zero to get an inexact infinity is much safer. If
> you divide by a very small number you can easily get a near-infinite
> number in FP anyway; going slightly smaller (to an inexact zero) would
> then produce a correspondingly slightly larger (inexact infinity)
> result, rather than a nasty surprise :-)

Indeed, numbers sufficiently close to zero (called denormalized numbers)
actually have +inf.0 as their inverse:

#;1> (/ 4.322644347104e-314)
+inf.0

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If I read "upcoming" in [the newspaper]              John Cowan
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