How to represent the infinite ?

[Huaiyu Zhu]

Christophe Delord <christophe.delord at free.fr> wrote:
>On Thu, 20 Jun 2002 20:11:25 +0000 (UTC)
>huaiyu at gauss.almadan.ibm.com (Huaiyu Zhu) wrote:
>
>> Christophe Delord <christophe.delord at free.fr> wrote:
>> [regarding 1e1000 giving inf]
>> >With Python 2.2 and Linux it works. The example I gave is a copy-paste from IDLE. It also works with my Python 1.5.2 and 2.3 (I'm under Linux on an Intel processor)
>> 
>> Does 1e200**2 also work for you out of the box?  I had to get rid of the
>> artificial check for overflow in the source to really use inf in
>> computations.  I don't remember if 1e1000 works on my box without patch.
>
>
>>>> 1e200**2
>Traceback (most recent call last):
>  File "<pyshell#1>", line 1, in ?
>    1e200**2
>OverflowError: (34, 'Numerical result out of range')
>>>> 1e400
>inf
>
>When the overflow occurs, the OverflowError exception is thrown. inf can't be the result of a computation (without patch and without catching exception).

OK, that's what I thought.  I still don't understand why it should default
to disabling inf and nan in computation.  I've lived without the overflow
checking for a year, without noticeable bad effect (with much benefit, of
course).

Huaiyu