Rappresenting infinite

[Terry Reedy]

"John Nagle" <nagle at animats.com> wrote in message 
news:iFchi.490$eY.360 at newssvr13.news.prodigy.net...
|    If Python numerics don't define
| +INF, -INF, and NaN, along with the tests for them, that's a
| flaw in the language.

Are you volunteering to fix the 'flaw'?  CPython floating point numerics 
are currently defined to be C doubles and whatever else the particular 
compiler/hardware provides.  But Tim Peters said at least 5 years ago that 
a volunteer could try to improve portability.  Various people have since 
talked about doing something.

|  We can assume IEEE floating point at this
| late date; it's been standard for twenty years and Java assumes it.

Not all processors running Python even have floats ;-)
In any case, the IEEE standard did not seem to define a standard C binding.
Neither did the C89 committee.  So gcc and msc differ on how to spell such 
things.
Not everyone is satisfied with the Java solution.