INF, NAN, and Null

Revision as of 20:13, 3 February 2007 by Max (talk | contribs) (New page)

These are special values that Analytica returns in special conditions:

Inf means infinity or a real number larger than can be

represented -- e.g., 1/0 or 1.797E307 * 10 (because it can't represent numbers larger than 1.796E308)

-Inf rmeans negative infinity or a number smaller than can be

represented, e.g., -1/0

NAN means "Not A Number", where the result is numeric, but not a real number or infinity -- e.g., Sqrt(-1) or 0/0
Null means that there is no such item. Slice, Subscript, Subindex, or MDTable return Null, for example, when trying to Slice out the nth slice over an Index with less than n values.
Undefined means that a value has never been defined or is uncomputed -- for example, the value of an optional parameter not provided to a function.

Computations with special values

Analytica follows ANSI (Association of National Standards Institutes) standards for computing with these special values, where applicable.

1/Inf %rarr; 0
1/(-Inf) %rarr; 0
Inf + Inf %rarr; Inf
Inf - Inf %rarr; NAN

It treats NULL as a "no-op", where possible, so:

10 + NULL %rarr; 10
NULL - 10 %rarr; -10
1 AND NULL %rarr; 1
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