Help me understand infinity

[Alex Tweedly]

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.