[Python-Dev] infinities (original) (raw)

tomer filiba tomerfiliba at gmail.com
Sun Nov 26 16:40:52 CET 2006

i found several places in my code where i use positive infinity (posinf) for various things, i.e.,

def readline(self, limit = -1):
    if limit < 0:
        limit = 1e10000 # posinf
    chars = []
    while limit > 0:
        ch = self.read(1)
        chars.append(ch)
        if not ch or ch == "\n":
            break
        limit -= 1
    return "".join(chars)

i like the concept, but i hate the "1e10000" stuff... why not add posint, neginf, and nan to the float type? i find it much more readable as:

if limit < 0:
    limit = float.posinf

posinf, neginf and nan are singletons, so there's no problem with adding as members to the type.

-tomer

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