From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <138575261003260957o672da8edmd17102c30fa42c40@mail.gmail.com> References: <138575261003260458l18239e6cm9cce321b273d18d@mail.gmail.com> <13426df11003260944l57a38872v9633ca93500b3f9e@mail.gmail.com> <138575261003260957o672da8edmd17102c30fa42c40@mail.gmail.com> Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:05:15 -0700 Message-ID: <13426df11003261005s22847644i430bc438fd4ee1c1@mail.gmail.com> From: ron minnich To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Subject: Re: [9fans] float overflow Topicbox-Message-UUID: f40a0c58-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:57 AM, hugo rivera wrote: > 2010/3/26 ron minnich : >> yes, so I wonder, under what circumstances would you want this >> non-useful output? Are you going to do further computation with the >> number that you can not represent? I almost prefer the Plan 9 behavior >> in this case ... > > Well, I was expecting this question :-) > But I don't actually have a good answer. It just felt wrong to let the > program crash. Wrong answer for many cases. This is like saying you're happy with undetected memory corruption which might change data or break pointers. Would you accept that too? You just computed a number than can not be represented -- what do you intend to do with that? I think Plan 9 is right, and Linux wrong. ron