jkruck:<rue> % uname -srvm
HP-UX B.11.00 U 9000/800
jkruck:<rue> % perl -v

This is perl, version 5.005_03 built for PA-RISC1.1

Copyright 1987-1999, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License
+ or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5.0 source 
+kit.

Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found 
+on
this system using `man perl' or `perldoc perl'.  If you have access to
+ the
Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.com/, the Perl Home Pa
+ge.

jkruck:<rue> % perl -wle 'print 0**0'
1
[download]

Scott
Project coordinator of the Generic Model Organism Database Project

Clearly, if you are doing some numerical analysis, and you know in your case that 0**0 = 1 is not the right way to go, you absolutely should be checking for zeroes and handling them appropriately.

I need it to be 1. The question is if Perl will always say 0**0 is 1, or if it does something different on other platforms. Because even mathematicians can't agree on what 0⁰ should be, I wonder if Perl will always deal with it in the same way, or depending on system configuration.

Juerd
- http://juerd.nl/
- spamcollector_perlmonks@juerd.nl (do not use).

Yes, I was somewhat disturbed by what Abigail-II reported for Perl 4; one would hope for consistency. I assume you've looked in the Perl source code to see how it evaluates 0**0? I would guess that it uses the operating system's math tools. I guess you are going to have to check for zeroes anyway, and set the value as an exception to be safe. Ugly, but it should work.

Scott
Project coordinator of the Generic Model Organism Database Project