OpenEuphoria

1. divide by zero error

• Posted by Kat Mar 15, 2009
• 1472 views
• Last edited Mar 16, 2009

Perhaps there is an alternative to fatal errors caused by dividing by zero?

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/6114/divzerosafety.png

useless

3. Re: divide by zero error

• Posted by irv Mar 17, 2009
• 1377 views

If you divide a pie by 4, you have 4 pieces. If you divide your pie by 2, you have two pieces to distribute.

If you divide it by zero, you haven't divided it at all, so you get to eat the whole dang pie.

I see nothing wrong with that.

5. Re: divide by zero error

• Posted by euphoric (admin) Mar 17, 2009
• 1432 views

I wish I hadn't seen that.

7. Re: divide by zero error

• Posted by DerekParnell (admin) Mar 17, 2009
• 1378 views

LOL ... now that is funny.

(1 / 4) * 4  = 1 
(1 / 3) * 3  = 1 
(1 / 2) * 2  = 1 
(1 / 1) * 1  = 1 
(1 / 0.5) * 0.5  = 1 
(1 / 0.25) * 0.25  = 1 
(1 / 0.00001) * 0.00001  = 1 
(1 / 0) * 0  = 1   --- Ooops?! Multiplying by zero gives a non-zero answer! 

If dividing a pie by 2 gives two pieces, then dividing by 0.5 gives what? Oh - now we have two pies - we have ended world hunger. Just divide all the food we have by a half and we double the amount of food!

9. Re: divide by zero error

• Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Mar 18, 2009
• 1386 views

No problem. Here are some more randomly confusing articles about computers and math to boggle your eyes.

http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_zero http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaN

11. Re: divide by zero error

• Posted by SDPringle Mar 21, 2009
• 1326 views

Look this is just a problem of what should be done with non-sense calls or expressions:

• return an error code using the classical return found in everywhere or exception mechanism seen in java and c++?
• crash the program?
• signal an error at compile time if possible first then one of the former two if not?

They all have their advantages. I'm with you though, return an error code let the caller handle the exception with the modification of the third option above. Either way you need to check something: For the crash strategy it is before each call for bad inputs and in the return policy it can be after several calls for nonsensible outputs.

Shawn Pringle