Re: bug in (log)

Out of curiosity -- the spec mentions "floating point approximations",
and in this case I understand it is reasonable (a very small number is
treated like zero).

But is floating-point infinity also considered an approximation to very
large numbers?

(setq x (expt 10 5000))
(log x)   =>    11512.926

ECL, SBCL, Clisp, CCL, CMUCL return 11512.926.


ABCL doesn't (it actually invokes a TYPE-ERROR condition, because the
number is too large to be converted to DOUBLE-FLOAT) -- but it does
not return float infinity.


GCL's behavior is a bit more complicated:

(setq x (expt 10 5000))
(progn (setq y (log x)) 'whatever)    ;; don't let GCL print it yet!
  => WHATEVER

(type-of y)
  => LONG-FLOAT

But If I ask for the value of y on the REPL:

Error: 
Fast links are on: do (si::use-fast-links nil) for debugging
Signalled by SYSTEM::GCL-TOP-LEVEL.
Condition in SYSTEM::GCL-TOP-LEVEL [or a callee]: INTERNAL-SIMPLE-ERROR: Can't print a non-number.

(So I produced a non-printable LONG-FLOAT object by just calling
 `log` on an integer.)

I did not test Clasp.


Anyway - I was just wondering how to interpret the standard in this
respect.

J.

Stas Boukarev <[email protected]> writes:

> This is permitted by
> http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/12_acc.htm
>
> On Sun, Jul 3, 2022 at 12:10 AM James Cloos <cloos-GRsvFm/Gh/[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> (gitlab is uusable; i have to report here.)
>>
>> ecl 21.2.1 gives:
>>
>> > (log 1/6319748715279270675921934218987893281199411530039296)
>>
>> Debugger received error of type: DIVISION-BY-ZERO
>> #<a DIVISION-BY-ZERO 0x7ff5afe6c540>
>> Error flushed.
>>
>> whereas other cl's (i testyed sbcl and ccl) give results like:
>>
>> ? (log 1/6319748715279270675921934218987893281199411530039296)
>> -119.27552
>>
>> I tested on amd64 (gentoo) and arm64 (debian and netbsd) with identical
>> results.  i did not have a musl box or other bsd to test on.
>>
>> run with --no-trap-fpe, the result is #<single-float negative infinity>.
>>
>> another example is:
>>
>> (truncate (log 1/6319748715279270675921934218987893281199418867))
>>
>> Debugger received error of type: ARITHMETIC-ERROR
>> #<a ARITHMETIC-ERROR 0xffff8f688a40>
>>
>> whereas this works:
>>
>> (truncate (log 1/631974871527927067592193421898789328119941867))
>>
>> -103
>> -0.27893066
>>
>> which of course suggests that the issue is c's long double's precision.
>>
>> it looks like ecl could use an mpq log function;
>> https://github.com/linas/anant might work.
>>
>> -JimC
>> --
>> James Cloos <cloos-GRsvFm/Gh/[email protected]>         OpenPGP: 0x997A9F17ED7DAEA6
>>