Portably generating infinity and NaN

[Michael Hoffman]

skip at pobox.com wrote:
>     Michael> If you're going to change CPython to do this, I think adopting
>     Michael> PEP 754, and using the fpconst module would be better than
>     Michael> changing how float() works when called on string literals. 
> 
> But PEP 754 will only work for architectures supporting IEEE 754.  I realize
> that's the vast majority of systems, but aren't there still a few Crays and
> VMS machines out there?  (Do those architectures support NaN and Inf?)

Will float("NaN") work on these systems? (I don't know.) I guess it 
probably works on some system that isn't IEEE 754.
-- 
Michael Hoffman