Looking for the greatest negative float value

[Bengt Richter]

On Wed, 11 Jun 2003 18:52:17 +0200, "Gilles Lenfant" <glenfant at NOSPAM.bigfoot.com> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I need the same as...
>
>import sys
>negmaxint = - sys.maxint -1
>
>... but for float data
>
>any hint ?
>

To get what you want (wyw) maybe you have to compute it. E.g.,

 >>> fmin = -1.0
 >>> while 1:
 ...    fnext = fmin*2.0-1.0
 ...    if fnext==fmin: break
 ...    wyw = fmin
 ...    fmin = fnext
 ...
 >>> `wyw`
 '-8.9884656743115795e+307'

I'm not sure how portable this is, but the actual value
can surely vary according to platform. I suppose you could set up a site-specific
initialization to put such a value as sys.minfloat if you wanted to.

The timbot will have the best info ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter