Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 17:46:07 -0500 Message-Id: <200003142246.RAA20220@envy.delorie.com> From: DJ Delorie To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com In-reply-to: <200003142156.WAA20972@father.ludd.luth.se> (message from Martin Str|mberg on Tue, 14 Mar 2000 22:56:22 +0100 (MET)) Subject: Re: Unnormals??? References: <200003142156 DOT WAA20972 AT father DOT ludd DOT luth DOT se> Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: dj-admin AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk > Can NaNs be negative? Since FP numbers have an explicit sign bit, every FP bit pattern can be negative or positive. Whether or not it makes sense to reflect that is a different story; most software doesn't care about the difference between +0 and -0. In the case of NaNs, knowing the sign is probably useful for debugging, since the sign is often preserved even when the math over/underflows or becomes undefined (division by zero).