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Divinding floating points by zero

 
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Hi!
Little doubt.
Kathy's book says that when divided by zero, a floating point may become infinity or -infinity depending on the sign of the zero.
I checked it out and verified that, at least with sun's jvm, this result is actually due to the sign of the number beeing divided, the sign of the zero doesn't really matter.
Any comments?
 
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hi leandro

thats right the sign of the numerator is taken into consideration rather than the sign of zero
 
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yes , you are right ... I have also tried ...
 
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The following example shows that the sign of the 0.0 certainly has an effect on the sign of the infinite quotent:


Output:
 
Barry Gaunt
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This code:


and its output:


might give you an idea what's happening in your tests.
 
ankur rathi
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output :
Infinite
Infinite
-Infinite
-Infinite
 
ankur rathi
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Are you mean :
there is no difference b/w 0 & -0 .
 
ankur rathi
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I have checked :

1] there is no difference b/w 0 & -0 .
2] but this two 0.0 & -0.0 are different .
 
ranger
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The actually is a difference between -0.0 and 0.0, try sorting it and see what order they come out in.

Mark
 
Mark Spritzler
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"Sandy"-
Welcome to the JavaRanch! Please adjust your displayed name to meet the

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You used to be in compliance. Why did you change your name?

Thanks! and welcome to the JavaRanch!

Mark
[ January 14, 2005: Message edited by: Mark Spritzler ]
 
Leandro Melo
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Allright, you pointed the singalling diferences between 0.0 and 0 and -0.0 and 0. But, what is the reason behind it?
 
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Originally posted by rathi ji:
Are you mean :



I think he's actually quite nice
 
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Allright, you pointed the singalling diferences between 0.0 and 0 and -0.0 and 0. But, what is the reason behind it?



The definitive source that you appear to searching for is called "IEEE754".
This defines how floating-point data types are represented, and how they are operated on, etc.
 
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Please download:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/ieee754status/IEEE754.PDF
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