Help me understand infinity

[Mark Wieder]

On 7/29/20 12:08 PM, Alex Tweedly via use-livecode wrote:
> 
> On 29/07/2020 18:57, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode wrote:
>> In the v9.6.1RC1 Release Notes there's this:
>>
>>    Infinity constant
>>    The constant infinity has been added to the language in this release.
>>    As a result, theunquoted literal infinity is now reserved. Any
>>    existing uses of it should be quoted, as otherwiseit will resolve to
>>    the floating point value representing infinity, rather than the
>>    string "infinity".
>>
>> What is the use-case prompting this?
>>
> A coupe of choices:
> 
> 1. Less serious: It's a "bragging rights" thing. Every other (*almost*) 
> computer language has a constant representing infinity, and as Livecode 
> grows up, it felt it needed one too.
> 
> 2. More serious: It is a reliable floating point number that can be 
> represented in IEEE FP number space - and can therefore be relied on to 
> act as you would expect in comparisons. Any number compared to positive 
> infinity (other than itself) *will* be less than it.
> 
> Alex.

Having played in the group Aleph Null for some years (cdbaby) I can't 
resist jumping into this one:

less serious:
if x > infinity
   throw a_tantrum
then

more serious:
The new constant of infinity fits nicely into the IEEE FP space, so it 
will function here as aleph one, but I think LiveCode will internally 
cast an integer comparison, so it should also function as aleph null.

-- 
  Mark Wieder
  ahsoftware at gmail.com