[Fsf-friends] [OT]Doing arithmetic with computers

[phatak@iopb.res.in]

On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Vivek Khurana wrote:

> On 6/7/05, Ramanraj K <ramanraj.k@gmail.com> wrote:
> > While doing arithmetic, how is infinity represented on a computer?
> > 
> 

This cannot be done because a number ( whether integer or floating point ) 
is represented by finite number of bytes, no matter what precision one 
uses. An infinitely large number cannot be represented by finite bytes. 
This and other limitations like granularity of floating point numbers 
cannot be avoided in numerical computations and one has to live with 
these. One can DEFINE infinity to be the largest number that can be 
represented but strictly speaking that is not correct. One may actually 
have a number larger than this number which is not infinite.

It may be possible to define infinity in algebraic computation if the 
computer is 'taught' the rules of analysis ( which is done in some 
packages ).

Shashikant Phatak