[Python-Dev] VAX NaN evaluations

[John Klos]

Hi,

The nice Python folks who were at SCALE in Los Angeles last year gave me a 
Python t-shirt for showing Python working on m68k and for suggesting that 
I'd get it working on VAX. With libffi support for VAX from Miod Vallat, 
this is now possible.

However, when compiling Python, it seems that attempts to evaluate NaN are 
made in test_complex.py, test_complex_args.py, test_float.py and 
test_math.py (at least in 2.7.5 - I'm working on compiling 3.3.2 now).

The short answer is to skip those tests on VAXen. The better answer is to 
patch any isnan functions to always return false on VAXen and patch any 
code which tries to parse, for instance, float("NaN") to use something 
uncommon, such as the largest representable number (const union __double_u 
__infinity = { { 0xff, 0x7f, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff } };) or 
something else equally rare. While code which depends on the ability to 
evaluate NaNs in some meaninful way will likely break on VAXen, I think 
this is better than raising an exception.

Being completely new to Python, I'm not sure what's best to do here. What 
would be the best way to find code which handles evaluation of "NaN"? Does 
anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks,
John Klos