Re: sort error when NaN and NA are both present

[John W. Eaton]

On 17-Jan-2012, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:

| On 17 January 2012 12:22, Mark Messer <address@hidden> wrote:
| > I am not sure if this is worth a bug report or not. These ought to have the
| > same answer.
| >
| > I am using 32 bit Windows Vista, and Octave 3.4.3.
| >
| >
| > octave:713> sort([NaN,NA,inf,1,-inf])
| > ans =
| >
| >   -Inf     1   Inf   NaN    NA
| >
| > octave:714> sort([NA,NaN,inf,1,-inf])
| >
| > ans =
| >
| >   -Inf     1   Inf    NA   NaN
| 
| Every comparison with NaN is false. NA is just another name for NaN in
| Octave. So NaN are unsorted. This is part of the IEEE 754 standard.

NA is a particular NaN value, so it would be possible to sort NA
vs. other NaN values.  But I'm not sure it is worth the effort.

jwe