error - system too complex



On Wed, 22 Jun 2005, Robert Dodier wrote:

> (Lisp in general, including GCL apparently, isn't
> comfortable with the IEEE 754 special values
> for not-a-number and infinity.)

Lisp in general has no problem with them, but implementations aren't 
required to support them, (ditto for signed zeros).

Indeed, ANSI CL specifies :IEEE-FLOATING-POINT in *FEATURES* to indicate 
that the implementation purports to conform to the requirements of IEEE 
Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic. However, how what this 
exactly means is rather vague.

   http://common-lisp.net/project/ieeefp-tests/

might be of interest to at least some Maxima developers.

Cheers,

  -- Nikodemus              Schemer: "Buddha is small, clean, and serious."
                   Lispnik: "Buddha is big, has hairy armpits, and laughs."