Re: Divide by Zero
Richard <[email protected]> Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:41:05 -0000
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.windows.devel.dotnet.clr |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
The .Net CLR *promises* that the floating point format will be the IEEE floating point standard. That is where the behavior comes from. The Intel FPU may well have implemented that standard too. Cheers, - Richard [email protected] www.dynamisys.co.uk Land line +44 1793 731225 Mobile +44 7732 971786 -----Original Message----- From: Discussion of development on the .NET platform using any managed language [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kevin Jones Sent: 26 February 2008 10:18 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [DOTNET-CLR] Divide by Zero I always understood this to be a feature of Intel processors. In the old days (writing native code), floating point went to the FPU, which, in the very old days, was a separate chip. This handled float divide by zero and returned NaN. While the main CPU which handles integer division threw an exception. IIRC you can change this behavior with a setting in the registry, although it's been about 12 years since I tried it and never on CLR, Kevin On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 9:28 AM, Per Bolmstedt <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:35:15 +0100, Frans Bouma <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> In a little more than a nutshell, why does the CLR only throw a divide by > >> zero exception for integers? > > > > I think because, if I recall correctly, a floating point number is > > always an approximation, so you can have a floating point value > > which seems 0 but actually isn't. > > I disagree. PositiveInfinity, for example, is not an approximation. It's > really infinity. > http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.double.positiveinfinity.aspx > > I found this concisely helpful: > http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/754/faq.html#exceptions > > Couldn't it be seen as that decimal/integer have been simplified in the CLR > (for programmers), whereas single/double retain their complexity (for > mathematicians)? > > > > =================================== > This list is hosted by DevelopMentor(R) http://www.develop.com > > View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com > =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentorR http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor® http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com