On 7/29/20 12:08 PM, Alex Tweedly via use-livecode wrote:
On 29/07/2020 18:57, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode wrote:
In the v9.6.1RC1 Release Notes there's this:
Infinity constant
The constant infinity has been added to the language in this release.
As a result, theunquoted literal infinity is now reserved. Any
existing uses of it should be quoted, as otherwiseit will resolve to
the floating point value representing infinity, rather than the
string "infinity".
What is the use-case prompting this?
A coupe of choices:
1. Less serious: It's a "bragging rights" thing. Every other (*almost*)
computer language has a constant representing infinity, and as Livecode
grows up, it felt it needed one too.
2. More serious: It is a reliable floating point number that can be
represented in IEEE FP number space - and can therefore be relied on to
act as you would expect in comparisons. Any number compared to positive
infinity (other than itself) *will* be less than it.
Alex.
Having played in the group Aleph Null for some years (cdbaby) I can't
resist jumping into this one:
less serious:
if x > infinity
throw a_tantrum
then
more serious:
The new constant of infinity fits nicely into the IEEE FP space, so it
will function here as aleph one, but I think LiveCode will internally
cast an integer comparison, so it should also function as aleph null.
--
Mark Wieder
ahsoftw...@gmail.com
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