Re: About diagonal matrices

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 6:40 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 22-Feb-2009, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
>
> | The situation is really analogous. To say it differently, it's as if
> | you did a part of the calculation symbolically; therefore, the invalid
> | numerical value (which a NaN is) does not demonstrate itself.
>
> OK, I see the point, but it still seems somewhat bad that a NaN can
> disappear from a calcuation.
>

Wouldn't that sort of defeat the whole purpose of having Infs and NaNs?
I always thought that yielding a NaN or Inf is better than generating
a runtime error primarily for the reason that the result might not be
actually later used at all, which is what we're arguing about.
Otherwise, I just don't get the point of NaNs.

> In any case, at this point I don't think it makes sense to hold up the
> release for this issue.
>
> jwe
>



-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz