[Haskell-cafe] Re: Why purely in haskell?

[Ketil Malde]

Wolfgang Jeltsch <g9ks157k at acme.softbase.org> writes:

> However, the fact that (0 / 0) == (0 / 0) yields False is quite shocking.  It 
> doesn’t adhere to any meaningful axiom set for Eq.

Tough luck, but that's how floating point works, and what the
numericalists know, and possibly even love (although I have my
doubts).  Sanitizing this behavior would make Haskell less usable for
real-world numerical problems.

As a compromise, what about an option to make NaN (and presumably the
infinities) cause an immediate exception?  (And, cetero censeo,
exceptions for Int overflow as well.)

-k
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants