From: Elias Athanasopoulos <elathan@...>
Date: 2004-05-06T02:33:52+09:00
Subject: 0.0 sign

Hello!

I don't know if this is intentional, but is there a reason
that 0.0 holds the sign?

tiny = 0.0000000000000000001
inf = 1/tiny

a = 1/inf
b = -1/inf

p a, b, (a-b), (a+b)

a = -1/inf
b = 1/inf

p a, b, (a-b), (a+b)

I can hardly imagine you can use it somehow; OTOH it can
make the output a little uglier. :-)

I checked Python and altough 0.0 carries the sign it is not
used in the results of subtraction/addition, as it is in Ruby.

Regards,
-- 
University of Athens			I bet the human brain 
Physics Department				is a kludge --Marvin Minsky 

	
--- /home/elathan/hacking/ruby/numeric.c.orig	2004-05-05 00:18:12.000000000 +0300
+++ /home/elathan/hacking/ruby/numeric.c	2004-05-05 00:18:41.000000000 +0300
@@ -502,6 +502,7 @@
     avalue = fabs(value);
     if (avalue == 0.0) {
 	fmt = "%.1f";
+    value = avalue;
     }
     else if (avalue < 1.0e-3) {
 	d1 = avalue;