5 ms·

This is not true if you say division by 0 is undefined or +inf either. It really is totally fine.

• ggggtez 8y ago
  No, you are assuming that 1/0= "undefined" where "undefined" is a magical value. It's not. It literally means 'That operation has no definition, and there is no reasonable result to return'. Many languages handle this in a practical way by creating a special value "undefined", "NaN", or others that has special properties. But let's be clear that "0" is a normal number in the real number space, as so expectations about properties of real numbers are not going to hold up.
  • wan23 8y ago
    When there is no reasonable result to return does it really matter what result is returned? 1 / 0 == 0 is about the same as 1 / 0 == 3. To avoid this just don't do 1 / 0 in your program.
    • lmm 8y ago
      > 1 / 0 == 0 is about the same as 1 / 0 == 3 Sure, and both are bad. > To avoid this just don't do 1 / 0 in your program. If you're going to avoid doing it, better to have it throw an exception if you do it by accident.