Re: >>: Exceptions vs NaN/NaI
On 2012-05-07 18:05:29 +0100, John Pryce wrote:
> However IEEE754-2008 §5.10 defines the *totalOrder* predicate:
> "totalOrder(x, y) imposes a total ordering on canonical members of
> the format of x and y".
Does this predicate really make sense? Is the goal to be able to
sort numeric datums in a predictable way, or has it another use?
Is it used in practice?
Perhaps one could allow language exceptions instead of NaN. For 754
formats, NaN in the data type would be mandatory and would follow
(B2), but the behavior could be the one specified by IEEE 754 (see
its Section 8 "Alternate exception handling attributes").
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@xxxxxxxxxx> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)