[Haskell] Literal for Infinity

While checking for floating-point overflow and underflow conditions, I tried to create a somewhat reliable cross-platform Infinity with the literal "1e100000". When GHC 6.4.1 reads this literal, it goes into a deep trance and consumes huge amounts of memory. Shouldn't it immediately recognize such a thing as Infinity? Is there a better way to check for Infinity? I have not yet figured out how to check for NaN at all - because it is not equal to itself. Any suggestions? BTW, I notice that Simon PJ proposed literals for Infinity and Nan several years ago: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2001-August/007753.html Did anything ever come out of this? Regards, Yitzchak