On 4/27/2011 10:53 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 7:39 AM, Raymond Hettinger
>> Identity-implies-equality is necessary so that classes can maintain
>> their invariants and so that programmers can reason about their code.
[snip]
>> See http://bertrandmeyer.com/2010/02/06/reflexivity-and-other-pillars-of-civilization/ for
>> a nice blog post on the subject.
I carefully reread this, with the comments, and again came to the
conclusion that the committee left us no *good* answer, only a choice
between various more-or-less unsatifactory answers. The current Python
compromise may be as good as anything. In any case, I think it should be
explicitly documented with an indexed paragraph, perhaps as follows:
"The IEEE-754 committee defined the float Not_a_Number (NaN) value as
being incomparable with all others floats, including itself. This
violates the math and logic rule that equality is reflexive, that 'a ==
a' is always True. And Python collection classes depend on that rule for
their proper operation. So Python makes the follow compromise. Direct
equality comparisons involving Nan, such as "NaN=float('NaN'); NaN ==
ob", follow the IEEE-754 rule and return False. Indirect comparisons
conducted internally as part of a collection operation, such as 'NaN in
someset' or 'seq.count()' or 'somedict[x]', follow the reflexive rule
and act as it 'Nan == NaN' were True. Most Python programmers will never
see a Nan in real programs."
This might best be an entry in the Glossary under "NaN -- Not a Number".
It should be the first reference for Nan in the General Index and linked
to from the float() builtin and float type Nan mentions.
> Maybe we should just call off the odd NaN comparison behavior?
Eiffel seems to have survived, though I do not know if it used for
numerical work. I wonder how much code would break and what the scipy
folks would think. 3.0 would have been the time, though.
--
Terry Jan Reedy
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