INFNAN(3M)																INFNAN(3M)

NAME

       infnan - signals invalid floating-point operations on a VAX (temporary)

SYNOPSIS

       #include <math.h>

       double infnan(iarg)
       int iarg;

DESCRIPTION

       At  some  time  in  the future, some of the useful properties of the Infinities and NaNs in the IEEE standard 754 for Binary Floating-Point
       Arithmetic will be simulated in UNIX on the DEC VAX by using its Reserved Operands.  Meanwhile, the Invalid,  Overflow  and  Divide-by-Zero
       exceptions  of the IEEE standard are being approximated on a VAX by calls to a procedure infnan in appropriate places in libm.  When better
       exception-handling is implemented in UNIX, only infnan among the codes in libm will have to be changed.	And users of libm can design their
       own infnan now to insulate themselves from future changes.

       Whenever  an  elementary  function  code  in  libm has to simulate one of the aforementioned IEEE exceptions, it calls infnan(iarg) with an
       appropriate value of iarg.  Then a reserved operand fault stops computation.  But infnan could be replaced by a function with the same name
       that returns some plausible value, assigns an apt value to the global variable errno, and allows computation to resume.	Alternatively, the
       Reserved Operand Fault Handler could be changed to respond by returning that plausible value, etc.  instead of aborting.

       In the table below, the first two columns show various exceptions signaled by the IEEE standard, and the default result it prescribes.  The
       third  column  shows what value is given to iarg by functions in libm when they invoke infnan(iarg) under analogous circumstances on a VAX.
       Currently infnan stops computation under all those circumstances.  The last two columns offer an alternative; they suggest  a  setting  for
       errno and a value for a revised infnan to return.  And a C program to implement that suggestion follows.
	      IEEE	IEEE
	      Signal	Default   iarg	  errno 	    infnan
	      __________________________________________________
	      Invalid	NaN	  EDOM	  EDOM		    0
	      Overflow	+-Infinity	  ERANGE	    ERANGEHUGE
	      Div-by-0	+-Infinity	  +-ERANGE	    ERANGE or EDOM+-HUGE
			(HUGE = 1.7e38 ... nearly  2.0**127)

       ALTERNATIVE  infnan:
       #include   <math.h>
       #include   <errno.h>
       extern int errno ;
       double	  infnan(iarg)
       int	  iarg ;
       {
		  switch(iarg) {
		  case	    ERANGE: errno = ERANGE; return(HUGE);
		  case	   -ERANGE: errno = EDOM;   return(-HUGE);
		  default:	    errno = EDOM;   return(0);
		  }
       }

SEE ALSO

       math(3M), intro(2), signal(3).

       ERANGE and EDOM are defined in <errno.h>.  See intro(2) for explanation of EDOM and ERANGE.

4.3 Berkeley Distribution					   May 27, 1986 							INFNAN(3M)