Surprise with special floating point values

[prouleau001 at gmail.com]

Hi all,

While trying to use simplejson under Python 2.4.3 I have been
investigating the handling of special floating point values and found
that both Python 2.4 and 2.5 return False when comparing  a NaN with
itself.   Although surprising, I imagine it could also be correct since
NaN is not a number.  But is it correct?

Notice the result of comparing c with itself in the following Python
2.5 session  (it works the same on Python 2.4.3) under Win32::

Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Sep 19 2006, 09:52:17) [MSC v.1310 32 bit
(Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> a = 1e300 * 1e300
>>> a
1.#INF
>>> b = 1e66666
>>> b
1.#INF
>>> a == b
True
>>> c = a - a
>>> c
-1.#IND
>>> d = b - b
>>> d
-1.#IND
>>> c == d
False
>>> c == c
False
>>> b == b
True
>>> a == a
True
>>> a is a
True
>>> b is b
True
>>> c is c
True
>>> d is d
True
>>>

Thanks,

--
Pierre Rouleau