>>>>> "Robert" == Robert Dodier writes:
Robert> --- Nikodemus Siivola wrote:
>> 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.
Robert> I find CMUCL and GCL both have :IEEE-FLOATING-POINT in
Robert> *FEATURES*, although they both barf on computations which
Robert> would yield not-a-number or infinity. Clisp is honest enough
If you have an example of this barfing, please show it. By default,
in CMUCL, things that would produce NaN or infinity signal errors.
But you can change that so it does return NaN or infinity. Of course,
all computations after that are likely to be useless. And it's likely
maxima doesn't know what to do with NaN or infinity.
Robert> Maxima probably should try to work around the underlying
Robert> Lisp's prohibition of special values.
Which special values? NaN and infinity? CMUCL handles them fine.
Ray