16 Aug
2010
16 Aug
'10
9:13 p.m.
On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:44:52 +0100 Claude Heiland-Allen claudiusmaximus@goto10.org wrote:
Pd [/] guards against division by 0 by outputting 0 instead of +infinity, -infinity or NotANumber (depending on the sign of the left argument).
The reason why NaN and (to a lesser extent?) infinities are discouraged by non-scientific software is that it pollutes everything:
Yep, there's a few synthesis techniques like 1/1+cos(x^n) pulses and some DSF that rely on getting a 0 instead of an inf (otherwise you'd have to code ugly special cases around them and it would be quite unweildy to do in Pd).
Not sure to what extent it's still true but NaN used to royally screw up some versions of Jack and ALSA, requiring a complete restart of the audio stack.
a.
--
Andy Farnell padawan12@obiwannabe.co.uk