curious problem with large numbers

[Jeff Epler]

You may want to read
http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0754.html

Part of the text reads
    The IEEE 754 standard defines a set of binary representations and
    algorithmic rules for floating point arithmetic. Included in the
    standard is a set of constants for representing special values,
    including positive infinity, negative infinity, and indeterminate or
    non-numeric results (NaN). Most modern CPUs implement the IEEE 754
    standard, including the (Ultra)SPARC, PowerPC, and x86 processor
    series.

    Currently, the handling of IEEE 754 special values in Python depends
    on the underlying C library. Unfortunately, there is little
    consistency between C libraries in how or whether these values are
    handled. For instance, on some systems "float('Inf')" will properly
    return the IEEE 754 constant for positive infinity. On many systems,
    however, this expression will instead generate an error message.

Jeff
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