alt Hacker NewsI guess at the bit level, but not at the level of computation? Anything that relies on bit patterns of nans behaving in a certain way (like how they propagate) is in dangerous territory.
I guess at the bit level, but not at the level of computation? Anything that relies on bit patterns of nans behaving in a certain way (like how they propagate) is in dangerous territory.
> Anything that relies on bit patterns of nans behaving in a certain way (like how they propagate) is in dangerous territory.
Why? This is well specified by IEEE 754. Many runtimes (e.g. for Javascript) use NaN boxing. Treating floats as a semi-arbitrary selection of rational numbers plus a handful of special values is /more/ correct than treating them as real numbers, but treating them as actually specified does give more flexibility and power.