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At the last style review we were asked to come up with a taxonomy
of "representable entities". Here’s my response: The "representable entities" include NaNs, so by
double negation anything not Numbers fall into two classes: "infinity" and
"not infinity = finite". Finites fall into two classes: "zero" and
"nonzero". I guess nonzero includes “normal” and “unnormal”
– but I’m not sure if this is as useful as it used to be for just 754
binary numbers. I don’t want to restrict unnormal numbers to 754’s
denormal entities because there a denormal had a reserved exponent. Proposal: zero + nonzero + infinite + Warren Ferguson |