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Re: [bug-gawk] Overflow to Infinity
From: |
Andrew J. Schorr |
Subject: |
Re: [bug-gawk] Overflow to Infinity |
Date: |
Fri, 22 Jun 2018 22:55:58 -0400 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) |
Hi,
On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 03:19:40PM -0700, Daniel Pettet wrote:
> Thank you for following up on this. I agree with Arnold that there are two
> issue here and it is best to treat them separately. The first is about
> decoding very large numbers that overflow to +/- infinity. How the output
> is displayed is another problem that is more general in nature. To solve
> the first problem the output should be 'inf' or '-inf' to be consistent
> with the rest of gawk.
>
> Outputting '+inf' rather than 'inf' could solve the encode/decode
> round-about problem and is easier to spot since it looks numeric - which it
> is. How easy this is to do depends greatly on how gawk is implement.
Hmm. With --posix, "inf" and "infinity" are recognized as numeric values. So
there's no need for a leading "+" sign in that case. I wonder whether it's wise
for regular gawk to depart from that POSIX behavior. This is a tricky issue.
> Solving the second problem will also have to include NaNs. NaNs have signs
> in the floating-point unit but conceptually do not. One could output
> '.nan' rather than '+nan' and '-nan' to solve the encode/decode round-about
> problem. '.nan' also looks numeric.
That (.nan) doesn't feel like a good approach to me, because it's so
unconventional, but I'm open to being convinced.
Regards,
Andy
Re: [bug-gawk] Overflow to Infinity, Daniel Pettet, 2018/06/19