Re: strtod ("nan") returns negative NaN

[Achim Gratz <Stromeko at nexgo dot de>]

Corinna Vinschen writes:
> With your patch, strtold looks more correct, but it still prints the
> sign of NaN:
>
>   strtod ("nan", NULL) = nan
>   strtod ("-nan", NULL) = nan
>   strtold ("nan", NULL) = nan
>   strtold ("-nan", NULL) = -nan
>   nan ("") = nan
>
> Question: What's wrong with that?  Wouldn't it be more correct if
> strtod returns -NaN for "-nan" as well?

That's iffy, the treatment of sign bits for NaN is quite different from
the usual arithmetic rules.  A NaN is literally "not a number", i.e. the
computation has left the domain of representable FP numbers, so it
really doesn't have a sign.  That doesn't stop folks from using the sign
bit on its representation, but that's a different story.  The sign
properly belong to what is called the "payload", which is usally
ignored.  So converting "-nan" (or NaN multiplied by -1) really ought to
be just plain NaN.


Regards,
Achim.
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