As far as I understand it, a NaN signals more or less an error condition or the value of an operation whose result is undefined.

If you subscribe to that understanding, then a NaN could be seen closer to undef than to a nonzero number, and because undef is false, so could be NaN.

On the other hand, we already have undef, and I'm not sure whether it makes sense to introduce another form of undef, the "numerical undef", and what can of worms that opens (if any). I'm reminded of SQL and its various (theoretical) incarnations of NULL that you'd need if you went beyond 3NF.


In reply to Re: NaNs are true by Corion
in thread NaNs are true by syphilis

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.