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jdporter has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question: (math)

N/T

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

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Re: How do I create/detect/handle Infinity?
by shmem (Chancellor) on Jul 25, 2009 at 11:04 UTC

    Creating Inf/NaN:

    use Devel::Peek; $inf = (~@~)**(~@~); $nan = $inf / $inf; Dump $_ for $inf, $nan; __END__ SV = NV(0x9e15f84) at 0x9dfc11c REFCNT = 2 FLAGS = (NOK,pNOK) NV = inf SV = NV(0x9e15f9c) at 0x9dfc59c REFCNT = 2 FLAGS = (NOK,pNOK) NV = nan

    Detecting Inf/NaN: since they are numeric values, Inf and NaN can be tested for with the numeric equality/inequality operators == and !=. For Inf, greater and less also work.

    Handling: not useful ;-)

    Devel::Peek

        NaN doesn't test as == anything, even another NaN.

        I was wondering:
        unless ($x <= $inf) { print "\$x is definitely a NaN\n" } else { print "\$x is definitely NOT a NaN\n" }
        Is that reliable ? ... assuming, of course, that $inf is in fact + infinity, and that there are no bugs present.
        Seems to me that ought to be good enough.

        Cheers,
        Rob
Re: How do I create/detect/handle Infinity?
by moritz (Cardinal) on Jul 24, 2009 at 18:21 UTC
    I think in Perl 5 this is platform specific, so I'll rather give the Perl 6 answer:
    my $num = Inf; given $num { say "+Inf" when Inf; say "-Inf" when -Inf; say "NaN" when NaN; }

    Works in Rakudo today.