[Python-ideas] Why is nan != nan?

[Alexander Belopolsky]

> On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 7:31 PM, Mark Dickinson <dickinsm at gmail.com> wrote:
..
>> What if the two nans have different payloads or signs?
>
> They are still equal.  Just as 0.0 and -0.0 are now.
>

Interestingly, Java departs from IEEE 754 on that last point as well:

"""
Note that in most cases, for two instances of class Double, d1 and d2,
the value of d1.equals(d2) is true if and only if

   d1.doubleValue() == d2.doubleValue()

also has the value true. However, there are two exceptions:

If d1 and d2 both represent Double.NaN, then the equals method returns
true, even though Double.NaN==Double.NaN has the value false.
If d1 represents +0.0 while d2 represents -0.0, or vice versa, the
equal test has the value false, even though +0.0==-0.0 has the value
true. This allows hashtables to operate properly.
""" http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/lang/Double.html