🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <clcm-20010907-0010@plethora.net>, u98ejr@ecs.ox.ac.uk 
says...
> > When checking for possible difficulty with division by zero, if you don't
> > wish to get into trapping overflow and the like, you should check at least
> > for small non-zero numbers.  If all your numerators have absolute value < 4,
> > you could safely do
> > #include <float.h>
> > if(fabs(y)>FLT_MIN)
> >     proceed with division by y
> > else
> >     treat as error
> 
> I'm not trying to be pedantic, I'm genuinely curious, but isn't
> 
> fabs(y) > FLT_MIN
> 
> equivalent to
> 
> f != 0
> 
> Since 0 can be represented exactly and FLT_MIN is the smallest
> possible float greater than zero?
> 


Even better, why treat it as an error when you can gracefully recover by 
simply making y = 1.0 instead.  I would also use doubles instead of 
floats, as they allow you to represent much larger numbers.

Without knowing the context of the original code, nore being able to see 
the original question, I would do this:


  if (y <= 0.0)
  {
      y = 1.0;
  }
  // proceed with division by y

This way, the division will ALWAYS be done, and will ALWAYS work.

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