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Re: reading NaNs

Aubrey Jaffer <agj@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>  | I disagree. IEEE-754 specifies the language-independent interface,
>  | as seem from the point of view of the programmer.
>
> According to IEEE-754:
>
>   user.  Any person, hardware, or program not itself specified by this
>   standard, having access to and controlling those operations of the
>   programming environment specified in this standard.
>
> A Scheme implementation is a program; thus it qualifies as a user.
> IEEE-754 does not constrain its behavior.

It's a user from the point of the hardware which provides IEEE,
but it's an implementation from the point of the programmer.

The programmer is a user of IEEE exposed by Scheme, and expects
that the Scheme implementation will provide an IEEE-conformant
environment. If it doesn't, it's less useful.

-- 
   __("<         Marcin Kowalczyk
   \__/       qrczak@xxxxxxxxxx
    ^^     http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/