Re: [bug-gawk] Gawk and NaN values

[Hermann Peifer]

On 12/11/2011 20:33, Aharon Robbins wrote:
> Hi. I've just re-read this discussion again.  It would boil down
> to gawk having to have special case code to notice that a value
> is a NaN and then put a leading sign on it in the output.

Indeed, this is also how I thought about it.

> This is probably not a major change, but it means more documentation
> work, and I'm wondering if it's a big issue in practice.
>
> Hermann - is this affecting your getting real work done?  Or did you
> just happen to notice that gawk can output something that it won't
> accept as the corresponding input?

It is a bit of everything: first it was affecting some real work, then I 
invested some time and found out that gawk outputs NaNs, which it 
doesn't accept as input NaNs. Eventually, I added a workaround into my 
script (basically adding a leading "+" to all intermediate results).

In short: not a big issue in (my) practice and you might want to spend 
your time with fixing more serious issues, and/or taking care of the 
enhancements listed in the FUTURES file, etc.

Regards, Hermann