This came up at YAPC::Europe. Someone [1] wanted to know if 1/0 would produce a divide by zero error in Perl 6, or if it would return a value representing an indeterminate result (undef?) It would make more sense for Perl, upon being given a simple bit of impossible math, to return undef (like other functions do on failure) than to generate an error. The error seems a throwback to earlier days of hardwired calculators.
If nothing else it would make guarding against indeterminate math easier. Rather than the user having to trap an error, or do possibly complicated work to see if any of the denominators might be zero, you can just see if the result is undef. [1] I apologize for forgetting who. [2] Discussion of divide by zero and why it's not infinity [3] http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.divideby0.html [3] I was always taught it's infinity. -- Michael G. Schwern <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/ Perl Quality Assurance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Kwalitee Is Job One Don't worry, baby, my wrath can be pretty groovy. http://www.goats.com/archive/980804.html
