number printing problems in 5.9.3 xmaxima onwindows/GCL
Subject: number printing problems in 5.9.3 xmaxima onwindows/GCL
From: Mike Thomas
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:18:01 +1000
> Greetings, and thanks Mike! Just to catch up on the thread,
> you need to (setq si::*print-nans* t) to print these numbers.
> Apparently, the result is libc version dependent (comes from
> sprintf), and specifically differs on Linux from Windows.
Aha!!! Yes, Stavros' result is correct for 2.6.8pre and I suppose you
are correct:
===============================
>(setq si::*print-nans* t)
T
>(* 1e300 1e300)
#<1.#INF00e+000>
===============================
MinGW32 C runtime uses an underlying Microsoft library (the Visual C++
runtime library) for these kinds of things. WHile it may be possible to
alter the result by fiddling with compiler switches related to floating
point on gcc, I think you are unlikely ever to replicate the Linux libc
results.