Unexpected NANs in complex arithmetic

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wednesday 22 June 2016 16:58, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> But it makes no sense to me to introduce a NAN into a calculation
> just because you multiply by 1, even if it includes an INF. And multiplying
> by -1 should be identical to negating.

Ah, not one second after I hit send, it struck me -- Python is casting the non-
complex factor to complex before doing the multiplication!

So:

1*(INF+2j)

which I was expanding into (1*INF) + (1*2j) = (INF+2j), gets performed by 
Python as:

(1+0j)*(INF+2j)

= 1*INF + 1*2j + 0j*INF + 0j*2j
= INF + 2j + NANj - 0
= INF + NANj



-- 
Steve