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

Adam Olsen rhamph at gmail.com
Mon Nov 27 10:17:10 CET 2006

On 11/26/06, tomer filiba <tomerfiliba at gmail.com> wrote:

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

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.

There's no reason this has to be part of the float type. Just define your own PosInf/NegInf singletons and PosInfType/NegInfType classes, giving them the appropriate special methods.

NaN is a bit iffier, but in your case it's sufficient to raise an exception whenever it would be created.

Consider submitting it to the Python Cookbook when you're done. ;)

-- Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus

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