NaN comparisons - Call For Anecdotes

[Ian Kelly]

On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 12:54 PM, Anders J. Munch <2014 at jmunch.dk> wrote:
>
> Ian Kelly wrote:
>>
>> As far as I know nothing changed between 2.4 and 2.7 in this regard.
>> Python has always had NaN compare unequal to everything, per the
>> standard.
>
> It might have been platform-specific in 2.4.

I doubt it, but okay, which platform?

>> Okay, here's your problem: there isn't just one binary representation
>> for NaN.
>
> I'm fully aware of that. Whether NaN's are one equivalence class or several
> is not the issue. What matters is the integrity of the equivalence relation.

I have some bad news for you.  This is on Python 2.7.6:

>>> from decimal import Decimal
>>> from fractions import Fraction
>>> Decimal(2) == 2
True
>>> 2 == Fraction(2)
True
>>> Decimal(2) == Fraction(2)
False

I'm not sure exactly when this bug was fixed, but it works as expected in 3.4.0.


>> Following the standard isn't a good reason itself?
>
> If a standard tells you to jump of a cliff...

So I don't know of a good use case for nan != nan in Python (but
really I'm not the one to ask), but I do know of use cases in other
scenarios.  On platforms that don't provide an isnan() function, the
only convenient and efficient way to test for nan is by testing
reflexivity: x != x.

Following the standard means that any algorithm that uses this trick
can (in theory) be implemented in Python without changes.