[Huaiyu Zhu, replying to Tim...] >It is interesting to know that someone actually relies on >OverflowError to detect underflow. But why not let them continue that >as well, given that all of these would be available in the future >anyway? I think I'm the someone referred to - but I _don't_ rely on this at all. I was reporting that, on my platforms, the behaviour of exp(-666) did _not_ change between 1.5.2 and 2.0, both of which raised an OverflowError (for underflow). I prefer Tim's change so that exp(-huge) will produce 0, and that exp(huge) produces an OverflowError, even though this changes the behaviour when moving from 1.5.2 to 2.x... [Huaiyu Zhu again] >Before that happens, why consistency accross platform is deemed more >important than consistency accross releases? My naive thinking is >that people port more from 1.5.2 to 2.0 than from one platform to >another, isn't it? :-) In spite of the smiley, I'd have to say (politely) "Rubbish!". One of the many attractions of Python to me _is_ cross-platform consistency - more so than up-version consistency. In my previous life as a computational chemist I spent a lot of effort in writing code that was portable - indeed, we developed a pre-processor language (which spat out FORTRAN) to try to more easily handle OS/compiler/word-size/FP-characteristic/phase-of-moon issues. I first came up against IEEE stuff in the early 80's, and I agree with Tim - as a user, I hated the non-stop defaults. Mollycoddled by CDC machines, I was used to my code stopping when I divided by zero - it usually indicated a coding or algorithmic error. When (if) Python supports access to masking/unmasking 754 exceptions, that'll be good - in the meantime, from my POV, the steps taken by Tim/Guido are in the right direction. -- Mark Favas - m.favas@per.dem.csiro.au CSIRO, Private Bag No 5, Wembley, Western Australia 6913, AUSTRALIA
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