MR K P SCHUPKE wrote:
Double already has +Inf and -Inf; it's just that Haskell doesn't have (AFAIK) syntax to write them as constants.
In the source for the GHC libraries it uses 1/0 for +Infinity and -1/0 for -Infinity, so I assume these are the "official" way to do it.
Personally I would define nicer names:
positiveInfinity :: Double positiveInfinity = 1/0
negativeInfinity :: Double negativeInfinity = -1/0
Or just: infinity = 1/0 and use -infinity for the negative. One other nit: isn't the read/show syntax for Haskell98 types supposed to valid Haskell syntax?
From http://www.haskell.org/onlinereport/derived.html#derived-text
The result of show is a syntactically correct Haskell
expression containing only constants, given the fixity
declarations in force at the point where the type is declared.
[Note: the above sentecne refers specifically to derived instances,
but induction would require that it also holds for base types.]
However:
Prelude> let infinity = 1/0 :: Double
Prelude> show infinity
"Infinity"
Prelude> read (show infinity) :: Double
Infinity
Prelude> Infinity
<interactive>:1: Data constructor not in scope: `Infinity'
--
Glynn Clements