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Taylor Campbell wrote:
It is defined for the sake of computational convenience;
Fine, but it *is* defined. Originally you stated that a NaN "represents the condition of a computation whose meaning is undefined; it's not a defined result."
There are many different arithmetics. Examples of integer arithmetic that have been mentioned here are conventional arithmetic, modular arithmetic, and saturated arithmetic. IEEE flonum arithmetic is a further arithmetic; it may be strange, but it is (largely) well defined.
Regards, Alan -- Dr Alan Watson Centro de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica Universidad Astronómico Nacional de México