[fpc-pascal] real numbers infinity

[Florian Klaempfl]

Dimitris Apostolou wrote:
>>> when a real number overflows the program halts with EInvalidOp error.
>>> How can I make the program behave the more standard way, where the
>>> variable gets the value "inf" and execution continues normally? This 
> is
>>> vital for many tasks, like fractal computation.
>> You can use try..except..end block and switch -Sd when compile:
> 
> Thank you very much, this solves the problem though I think that 
> performance-wise it is not optimal. What is the reason for freepascal 
> being not IEEE-spec compliant? I

It is:
http://community.freepascal.org:10000/docs-html/rtl/math/setexceptionmask.html

You can turn off floating point exceptions using this procedure.

> Is it backwards compatibility?
> 
>> Or you may take a look IEEE specification if it is necessary to create
>> your
>> own big float support for larger precision with fractals.
> 
> It seems really weird that there is no such unit in the standard 
> freepascal distribution. It would be a huge task for me to create one 
> with C-like speed. 
> 
> Dimitris
>