🚀 go-pugleaf

Jim Giles:
   Well, you quoted my name on someone else's remarks.  In fact, I was
   disagreeing with the quote attributed to me above.

Yes.  My apologies.

   As for maximum elements of a type, what has that got to do with the
   issues raised here?

The maximum element of a type is the identity element for the MIN
operation. 

   The correct return of `min' applied to an empty is _not_ the
   maximum possible value of the type!

Who said anything about applying MIN to an empty?  The discussion was
about applying MIN REDUCTION to an empty.

   That implies that the array wasn't empty but it's minimum element
   had that value.

Every implementation of reduction that I've seen returns the identity
element for the specified operation when applied to an empty array.

   NAN (not a number) might be an appropriate return.

Are you saying that
   MIN(NAN, 5)
is 5?

   The user should have control over this explicitly though.  The user
   should decide what should be done if the array argument to a reduce
   is empty.

If that's the case, the user can do so... [obligatory description of
turing completeness elided].

-- 
Raul Deluth Miller-Rockwell                   <rockwell@socrates.umd.edu>