| Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 03:25:09 -0500 | From: Alan Watson <xxxxxx@astrosmo.unam.mx> | | NaNs are atoms -- they have no context or stucture, just a single | value. In an implementation which boxes flonums, NaNs aren't a single value; EQ? and EQV? are *not* guaranteed to return #t given two NaNs. [Read-sytnax for singular objects is useful because it allows those objects to be put in CASE clauses. But this works only for objects which match under EQV?.] | With the understandable exception of the eof object (and as has | been noted, this is exception is not universal), Lisps and Schemes | tranditionally provide read syntax for atoms. Closures and continuations are atomic; R5RS provides no way to deconstruct them. Yet every implementation I have encountered has a write syntax without a corresponding read syntax for them. | So, tradition suggests that we should have a read syntax for NaNs. Are you suggesting a single NaN or multiple distinct NaNs? To support existing IEEE-754 hardware, R6RS must not mandate multiple distinct NaNs. But specifying a singular NaN prevents implementations from fully supporting IEEE-754 in the future. Thus R6RS should declare that NaNs are numerical error-objects [or condition-objects, whatever], and leave the rest to implementations. We worked through this issue in SRFI-70. I think SRFI-70's treatment is Schemely, compatible with IEEE-754, and doesn't unnecessarily constrain implementations: The notation 0/0 is used within this report to designate a numerical error-object. A numerical function may return such an object when no other number (including real infinities) is the correct value. An implementation may report a violation of an implementation restriction in any calculation for which the result would be 0/0.
