Extreme floating point values
The IEEE floating point specification defines certain 'extreme' floating point values such as minus zero, -0.0, a value distinct from plus zero; not a number, NaN; and plus and minus infinity.
The task is to use expressions involving other 'normal' floating point values in your language to calculate these, (and maybe other), extreme floating point values in your language and assign them to variables. Print the values of these variables if possible; and show some arithmetic with these values and variables. If your language can directly enter these extreme floating point values then show it.
C.f:
- What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic
- Infinity
- Detect division by zero
Python
<lang python>>>> # Extreme values from expressions >>> inf = 1e234 * 1e234 >>> _inf = 1e234 * -1e234 >>> _zero = 1 / _inf >>> nan = inf + _inf >>> inf, _inf, _zero, nan (inf, -inf, -0.0, nan) >>> # Print >>> for value in (inf, _inf, _zero, nan): print (value)
inf -inf -0.0 nan >>> # Extreme values from other means >>> float('nan') nan >>> float('inf') inf >>> float('-inf') -inf >>> -0. -0.0 >>> # Some arithmetic >>> nan == nan False >>> inf + _inf nan >>> 0.0 * nan nan >>> nan * 0.0 nan >>> 0.0 * inf nan >>> inf * 0.0 nan</lang>
<lang python>>>> # But note! >>> 1 / -0.0
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#106>", line 1, in <module> 1 / -0.0
ZeroDivisionError: float division by zero >>> # (Not minus infinity)</lang>