Re: Re: [GENERAL] +/- Inf for float8's

Thomas -
A general design question. There seems to be a good reason to allow +/-Inf
in float8 columns: Tim Allen has an need for them, for example. That's
pretty straight forward, they seem to act properly if the underlying float
libs handle them.

I'm not convinced NaN gives us anything useful, especially given how
badly it breaks sorting. I've been digging into that code a little,
and it's not going to be pretty. It strikes me as wrong to embed type
specific info into the generic sorting routines.

So, anyone have any ideas what NaN would be useful for? Especially given
we have NULL available, which most (non DB) numeric applications don't.

Ross
--
Ross J. Reedstrom, Ph.D., <reedstrm(at)rice(dot)edu>
NSBRI Research Scientist/Programmer
Computer and Information Technology Institute
Rice University, 6100 S. Main St., Houston, TX 77005