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RE: motion addressing the need for consistency in distinguishing between numbers and NaNs
And yes, "value" should be "floating-point value". The intent was to
answer Dan's question: "What can be stored in a floating-point
variable". The proposed motion gives the answer: "a floating-point
variable stores a floating-point value".
May I suggest another answer: "floating point data"?
Reasons:
1. A NaN is a piece of data although not a number. This is especialy true
when the NaN is used in applications to denote uninitialized variables or
absent entries in spreadsheets.
2. Most users think of "value" as numeric.
We can then refer to a single string of bits as representing a "floating
point datum". As far as I can tell this term is not used in the standard
so far and should not conflict with any thing else.
--
Hossam.