Does Python have "not a number" floating point values?

[moron at Glue.umd.edu.bbs]

(Huaiyu Zhu) said:
>On Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:10:36 -0700, Russell E. Owen
><owen at astroNOJNK.washington.edu.invalid> wrote:
>>Does Python support any sort of floating point "not a number"
>>(e.g. IEEE infinity)?

Python floats inherit the behavior of your C platform's doubles, so on
an IEEE-754 system, they will act fairly IEEE-like, as Huaiyu
demonstrates:

>Inf = inf = 1e300**2
>NaN = nan = inf - inf

However, according to a recent post, the OpenVMS port of python uses
VAX-format math[1], which has less exponent range than IEEE.  I think
that that expression for Inf will not parse there.  I don't even know
if VAXen have Inf or NaN.

Warren Focke

[1] http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=640022415&fmt=text
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