Re: Numeric literals, take 1

> Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 16:23:00 -0600
> From: Jonathan Scott Duff <[email protected]>
> 
> > Which Inf is bigger?  Inf, or Inf?
> > 
> > You can't know, so it's NaN.
> 
> Maybe I'm just wired wrong, but Inf is the same size as Inf (since
> they are the same "value")  To me "Inf" is a textual representation of
> a value that's larger than all other values. So ...
> 
> 	Inf == Inf		# true
> 	Inf != Inf		# false
> 	Inf > Inf		# false
> 	Inf < Inf		# false
> 	Inf - Inf == 0		# true
> 	Inf + Inf == Inf	# true
> 
> But, I'm willing to be educated on the subject.  I don't ever use
> infinities in code now and I don't think I'm likely to (except perhaps
> in lazy list generation).

Look at this.  I think it's a pretty good (and interesting)
explanation:

http://askdrmath.com/library/drmath/view/53370.html

> The only infinities of varying sizes that I know of are the alephs,
> and they don't apply here.

Actually they do.  Consider a set with cardinality ℵ₀ (Aleph-null).
What's the cardinality if you add one more number to that set?  Still
ℵ₀, right?  Obviously the difference between their cardinal numbers is
1, but they're called the same thing.  So you can't really subtract
them with any _single_ meaning. Someone correct my if I've got my set
theory messed up.

Luke