Re: arithmetic issues

["John.Cowan" <jcowan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

bear scripsit:

> As for strings, pfah.  If you work in corpus linguistics it's not
> too uncommon to have literally millions of characters in a string.
> I'd really hate to see strings limited to 1023 characters.

Can you live with 2^24?

> >> Being error objects, syntax for NaNs should be unspecified.
> 
> >I don't see how that follows.
> 
> He means that NaNs should arise from error operations, not from
> the normal functioning of the reader.  If (read) returns an error
> object, it should mean that (read) encountered an error.

Since NaN is part of the prescribed behavior of IEEE floats, it is
not an error object in that sense; in particular there are operations
defined on NaN that do not produce NaN, notably the relational ones.

-- 
John Cowan  jcowan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand
on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability.
Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land,
to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.
        --Thomas Henry Huxley