On 7/27/2013 1:48 PM, Marco wrote:
In Python 3, when we hava a division and both the result and at least
one operand are too large to convert to float, we get an exception:
>>> 2**1028 / 2**-2
int/float gets converted to float/float and the int to float conversion
is not possible. The result is irrelevant since it never gets calculated.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<input>", line 1, in <module>
OverflowError: long int too large to convert to float
When the result is inside the limits, we get the right value:
>>> 2 ** 1025 / 2**10
3.511119404027961e+305
This must be doing integer division and then converting the result to
float, which it can.
Why the behavior is different in the case of the multiplication?
>>> 2 ** 1025 * 2**-10
Mathematically this is the same thing, but computationally, it is not
and you cannot expect to get the same answer. Like the first example,
2**-10 is a float, so 2**1025 must be converted to float to do float
multiplication. But that is not possible.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<input>", line 1, in <module>
OverflowError: long int too large to convert to float
I think the multiplication should have the same behavior than the
division:
* `inf` or `-inf` when the operands are inside the limits,
but the result is not
* `OverflowError` when the result, and at least one operand,
are out of range.
--
Terry Jan Reedy
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