Subject: Re: Cheating Underflow/Overflow Help Needed
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 13:39:17 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3231409155397588@naggum.net>

* Samantha Skyler
| I'm writing a subfunction that uses a lot of expt functions, so it
| tends to crash my main program a lot with over/underflow errors.

  This is so common a request that IEEE 754 has support for not causing an
  overflow or underflow, but instead return 0 and the largest possible
  value (as opposed to an internal "infinity" value).  This is not directly
  supported by the Common Lisp standard, but you should find some support
  for it in your implementation, or, if not, you should request it.
-- 
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  In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.

  70 percent of American adults do not understand the scientific process.