On 2013-09-05, Raymond Toy <toy.raymond at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "Robert" == Robert Dodier <robert.dodier at gmail.com> writes:
>
> Robert> I have to say that the complaint about 1000! too big to
> Robert> fit in a float seems less helpful. Why not just make it
> Robert> inf? (If such numbers are allowed at all.) Why should
>
> Because 1000! is big but not infinity? :-)
Well, 1000! is big-but-not-infinite in the same way as exp(1000e0).
> Robert> exp(1000e0) => inf while float(1000!) => error?
>
> I see that ccl complains about a floating-point overflow for
> exp(1000.0); cmucl returns infinity. (I think that's a bug in cmucl).
> I agree we should be consistent, but so much depends on the underlying
> lisp. We could implement exp ourselves, but that is probably not what
> we want to do.
Well, I don't see a need to try too hard to work around the
idiosyncrasies of the Lisp implementation. Mostly I was just venting.
best
Robert Dodier