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From: max@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Max Hailperin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.scheme,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.object
Subject: IEEE FP NaNs = everything else?
Message-ID: <1990Mar15.211150.19338@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 15 Mar 90 21:11:50 GMT
Sender: Max Hailperin <Hailperin@cs.stanford.edu>
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 10


Has anyone explored the possibility of useing IEEE floating-point as a
general representation in a manifestly-typed language, with everything
other than flonums being NaNs (Not-A-Numbers)?  On the surface, this
seems both attractive and ridiculous.  If I had to make a guess, I'd
guess that the former only took precedence over the latter for serious
crunching on specialized 64-bit machines.

But, the question is, can anyone do better than my 2-minute idle speculation?
Thanks.