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Aubrey Jaffer <agj@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > That is a good point. Of course you would want the written > representation to match the literal form so it works for > program-writing programs. Argggh! > > In my experience writing lots of mathematical code, the trick is not > generating NaNs, it is preventing them. Searching through my 70000 > line Scheme codebase, I find no literal NaNs or infinities. On the assumption that the literal form is rarely needed, it makes no sense to have one. An implementation might wisely provide a (nan) function that returns one, however, to at least be prettier than (/ 0. 0.). If NaNs carry around extra origin-marking information too, the (nan) function would be handy for that as well. Thomas