Happy Happy Joy Joy (was: On to Hydro)

[Ben Laurie]

"Mark S. Miller" wrote:
> Given a set (such as floating point values) of elements that one may compare
> with each other, the comparison operator must satisfy at least the minimum
> acceptable ordering contract, ie, the universal contract.  Since we want to
> accept IEEE floating point values as such a set, and since we're confident
> it's the worst case, we define the universal contract as an "irreflexive
> partial ordering", which we define as a partial ordering in which an element
> must either be equivalent or incomparable to itself. (NaN is incomparable to
> itself.)

Eh? Am I being terminally stupid? Surely there are multiple NaNs
(+infinity, -infinity and indefinite, for example), and some of them are
comparable, e.g. +infinity > -infinity.

Cheers,

Ben.

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