Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!uflorida!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: floating point constants
Message-ID: <10619@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 28 Jul 89 19:07:58 GMT
References: <1925@arisia.Xerox.COM> <14675@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 10

In article <14675@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> ari@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Ari Halberstadt) writes:
>... it would simply result in a divide by zero, which any normal
>maching would have a fit over.

Well, you see, the "maching" in question is not normal.  It implements
IEEE Std 754 floating-point arithmetic, which includes the notion that
1.0/0.0 is a representable "infinity" value suitable for further use
in computation.  Now, if you want to say that's a really sick notion,
I'd be inclined to agree with you.  The trouble is that it's widely
adopted.