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Subject: Re: [boost] [serialization] How are floating point values handled?
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-08-08 12:18:55


John Maddock wrote:
> It sounds reasonable in most cases - however there are situations
> when a genuine NaN might be required - an example might be where you
> have a table of statistics, and a NaN is used to indicate "no data".

Ahhh - another trap - semantic overloading. This is a design
shortcut - ie mistake which eventually leads to other pain.
It's the same problem of assigning meaning to NULL values
in databases. The proper way to address this is through a
variant which captures what the data really is.

I realize that every rule/design principle has its exceptions
and we can't (and shouldn't) be telling users what to do,
but I'm loath to spend huge amounts of time addressing
what for me are corner cases which are side effects of
more fundamental mistakes. And however I try to address
them, I can't really get it right for this very reason.

Robert Ramey

>
> John.
>
>
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