Nope, I'd disagree. Zero isn't an approximation of some epsilon, it's really jus... | Hacker News

Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit

		dataflow on Aug 10, 2018 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: 1/0 = 0 Nope, I'd disagree. Zero isn't an approximation of some epsilon, it's really just zero. It makes sense for the output sign to match the input sign.

gowld on Aug 11, 2018 [–]

What is the sign of 0?

It's 0.

dahart on Aug 11, 2018 | | [–]

Parent was talking about the sign of the numerator. But... zero in IEEE 754 representation has a meaningful sign bit. 1/-0 = -inf.

GlitchMr on Aug 11, 2018 | | [–]

Or as IEEE 754 sees it (you can try this in your JavaScript REPL).

  >> 1 / 0
  Infinity
  >> 1 / -0
  -Infinity

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact