Re: Negative zeros?

[Vic Norton]

OK, so there isn't easy way. So I'll just have Perl strip all the 
minus signs from my -0.0's.

Regards,

Vic

At 10:06 PM -0400 9/12/05, John W. Eaton wrote:
> On 12-Sep-2005, Vic Norton wrote:
>
> | Look at the following code
> |     octave> CS = [ 0 0 0 ]
> |     CS =
> |
> |       0  0  0
> |
> |     octave> CS *= -1
> |     CS =
> |
> |       -0  -0  -0
> |
> | I find this a real annoyance. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein:
> |     A zero is a zero is a zero.
> | Is there some easy way to stop Octave from outputting negative zeros?
>
> No.
>
> Does it matter?  -0 == 0.  But I think it is useful to keep the sign.
> It is also what other languages do (Octave is not doing anything
> tricky to give -0 results), and there is some logic to it.  It is also
> the IEEE standard behavior for floating point arithmetic.
>
> For more info, take a look at the section on signed zeros in the paper
> What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point
> Arithmetic (google the title and you will find it on the web).
>
> jwe


--
*---* mailto:address@hidden
|     Victor Thane Norton, Jr.
|     Mathematician and Motorcyclist
|     Bowling Green, Ohio
*---* http://vic.norton.name



-------------------------------------------------------------
Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
-------------------------------------------------------------