Bug #66732 for Math-BigInt: Math::BigFloat->numify() returns Perl scalar string, not number

Sun Mar 20 07:53:36 2011 peter.john.acklam [...] gmail.com - Ticket created

Subject:

Math::BigFloat->numify() returns Perl scalar string, not number

Contrary to the documentation, Math::BigFloat -> numify() returns a Perl scalar string, not a number. For instance, the following should print "1.23456e+105": $ perl -MMath::BigFloat -wle 'print Math::BigFloat -> new("123456e100") -> numify()' 123456e+100 And the following should overflow and print the appropriate representation of infinity: $ perl -MMath::BigFloat -wle 'print Math::BigFloat -> new("1e999999") -> numify()' 1e+999999 The bug is present at least all the way back to version 1.35.

Mon Jul 09 14:33:54 2012 BBYRD [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

The first case returns "1.23456e+105", which is, in fact, a number. Perl scalar numbers aren't going to be super-long digit strings. That would be a string. The second case returns "1.#INF", which appears to be a valid IEEE floating point string representation of positive infinity. This matches the result of: Show quoted text

>perl -MData::Float -wle "print Data::Float::pos_infinity"

1.#INF Please close this ticket.

Mon Jul 09 14:33:55 2012 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'

Thu Oct 31 11:56:40 2013 DANAJ [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

On my Linux system, I get the bad "123456e+100" for all my perls with Math::BigFloat 1.993 or earlier. 1.997 and later return the proper 1.23456e+105. Similarly, 1.993 and previous gave the bad "1e+999999" for the second case, while 1.997 and later give "inf". Cygwin gives me similar behavior -- 1.993 gives bad results, 1.997 gives good. Strawberry Perl with Math::BigFloat 1.997 or 1.998 gives interesting behavior: the correct response for the first, but "1.#QNAN" for the second. It looks like somewhere between 1.993 and 1.997 the main issue got fixed. The only thing I see left is the NAN instead of INF response on Strawberry Perl.

Thu Oct 31 11:59:56 2013 DANAJ [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

... and it looks like the Strawberry Perl issue was a MS-DOS command line issue that was my fault, so it works just fine once with " and ' characters are worked out. 1.#INF returned as expected. This should be closed as fixed in 1.997.

Thu Oct 31 11:59:56 2013 DANAJ [...] cpan.org - Fixed in 1.997 added

Wed Apr 09 05:22:13 2014 peter.john.acklam [...] gmail.com - Correspondence added

Fixed

Wed Apr 09 05:22:15 2014 peter.john.acklam [...] gmail.com - Status changed from 'open' to 'resolved'