Re: [Caml-list] Weird behavior with nan's and min/max

[Damien Doligez <damien.doligez@inria.fr>]

On Thursday, October 16, 2003, at 11:40 PM, Yaron Minsky wrote:

> let is_obj_nan x =
>   Obj.tag (Obj.repr x) = Obj.double_tag &&
>   (let f = (Obj.magic x : float) in not (f = f))
[...]
> The resulting code segfaulted on me, and the segfault went away when I
> went back to the ordinary min and max.  Does anyone have a thought on
> this?  Is this use of Obj safe or not?

The problem is that the argument of Obj.tag must be a pointer value
that lives in the heap.  A pointer value answers false to Obj.is_int,
but you have no way to test for heap-allocated values.

This is going to change soon because I am fixing the bug found by
Jacques with float lazy arrays, and in the process I will extend
Obj.tag to give meaningful answers for ints and non-heap-allocated
values.

In the meantime, you can use the following code, but it might still
fail in some rare cases when applied to non-heap-allocated values
(I/O channels for example):

let is_obj_nan x =
   not (Obj.is_int (Obj.repr x)) &&
   Obj.tag (Obj.repr x) = Obj.double_tag &&
   (let f = (Obj.magic x : float) in not (f = f))
;;

-- Damien

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