Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!news.swapon.de!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Rod Pemberton" Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Does Forth solve the paradox? Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 16:57:46 -0500 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Lines: 20 Message-ID: References: <6f36e5e5-037c-41e2-89c5-2bc11937ddcd@googlegroups.com> <0f1ea18f-42ed-4baa-835e-cc555bba0f57@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: CNsg4fVcCsvs3UaOgZtQCw.user.speranza.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Opera Mail/12.16 (Linux) X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.forth:34338 On Thu, 06 Nov 2014 11:26:22 -0500, Ilya Tarasov wrote: > 'We can't divide by zero. - Perhaps, with Forth we can?' :) This kind of > self-complacency brings absolutely nothing, except of wasted time. Well, mathematicians are fond of "proving" that .999 repeating is *equal* to one. This is *instead* of them proving the _limit_ of .999 repeating approaches one as the decimal places approach infinity, via a Taylor series. By their faulty logic, we can also "prove" zero is just 1 over X as X's value approaches infinity. Therefore, anything divided by zero is divided by one and multiplied by infinity, i.e., infinity. This is just division by a complex fraction. So, yes, you could check for zero with division operations in Forth and return the cloeset value to infinity that your Forth can represent, i.e., the maximum integer or maximum float. Rod Pemberton