Double -> CDouble, realToFrac doesn't work

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

| Hmmm, this is a little bit of a dark corner in the H98 report, but
there are
| probably other people on this list who know better than me. :-] The
problem
| is that 'realToFrac' is defined as 'fromRational . toRational', so the
first
| question is: How is 'toRational' supposed to handle NaN? One thing
coming to
| my mind is '0 :% 0', but this is normally a value which can't be
constructed.
| So the next question is: Would this be allowed? +Infinity and
-Infinity could
| be represented similarly then ('1 :% 0' and '(-1) :% 0'), and
'fromRational'
| could handle these values specially. But I can't believe that this has
been
| discussed for the first time. SPJ? Malcolm?

I don't recall a discussion about this, and a quick search in my mail
archive didn't turn up anything except the enclosed from George Russell.

I'm pretty ignorant about the dark corners of numerics, but it does seem
bad that passing through Rational loses information.  Perhaps the Report
should specify normalised representations for +Inf, -Inf and NaN as
Rationals (1:%0, -1:%0, and 0:%0 seem like plausible candidates).  

If someone wants to try this out, and send us a patch for the Rational
library, we could incorporate it.  And so far as the report goes,
perhaps the Errata could contain a note identifying the issue, and
suggesting a solution.  It's a bit late to *specify* a solution unless
we are really sure about it.

Simon

-----Original Message-----
From: George Russell [mailto:ger at informatik.uni-bremen.de] 
Sent: 25 February 2000 10:19
To: glasgow-haskell-users at haskell.org
Subject: Floating-point nitpicking: floor(Inf) and floor(NaN)

floor(Inf) and floor(NaN) do not appear to be defined in Standard
Haskell.
(They both come down to "properFraction" which is only defined for
Ratio.)
This differs from (for example) the Standard ML Basis Library, where it
is specified that floor(Int) should raise Overflow and floor(NaN) should
raise Domain.  Hence Hugs and GHC do different things.

Hugs returns floor(Inf) = 0 and floor(NaN) = 0
GHC returns floor(Inf) = very very large integer and floor(NaN) = even
larger
integer.  (This is because the GHC implementation of properFraction
simply
ignores the case of Inf/NaN and treats the artificially high exponent
encoded
in those floating-point numbers as if it were a real one.)

My own opinion is that Standard ML is right here and that floor(x)
should
raise an exception (In Haskell terms, fail) when x does not correspond
to a 
real number.

| -----Original Message-----
| From: glasgow-haskell-users-bounces at haskell.org
[mailto:glasgow-haskell-users-
| bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Sven Panne
| Sent: 08 August 2004 17:02
| To: Hal Daume III
| Cc: GHC Users Mailing List; Malcom Wallace
| Subject: Re: Double -> CDouble, realToFrac doesn't work
| 
| Hal Daume III wrote:
| > [...]
| > Prelude Foreign.C> (0 :: CDouble) / 0
| > NaN
| > Prelude Foreign.C> (0 :: Double) / 0
| > NaN
| > Prelude Foreign.C> realToFrac ((0 :: Double) / 0) :: CDouble
| > -Infinity
| >
| > yikes!  the NaN got turned into a -Infinity!!!
| >
| > aside from manually checking for 'strange' Double/CDouble values and
| > wrapping realToFrac, is there a better way?  also, does this count
as a
| > bug?
| 
| Hmmm, this is a little bit of a dark corner in the H98 report, but
there are
| probably other people on this list who know better than me. :-] The
problem
| is that 'realToFrac' is defined as 'fromRational . toRational', so the
first
| question is: How is 'toRational' supposed to handle NaN? One thing
coming to
| my mind is '0 :% 0', but this is normally a value which can't be
constructed.
| So the next question is: Would this be allowed? +Infinity and
-Infinity could
| be represented similarly then ('1 :% 0' and '(-1) :% 0'), and
'fromRational'
| could handle these values specially. But I can't believe that this has
been
| discussed for the first time. SPJ? Malcolm?
| 
| When you compile the stuff above with optimizations on, you get what
you've
| expected, thanks to RULES which shortcut the route via Rational
completely.
| 
| Cheers,
|     S.
| 
| _______________________________________________
| Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list
| Glasgow-haskell-users at haskell.org
| http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users