[ID 20010626.003] No more infinity

This is a bug report for perl from acme@ns0.astray.com,
generated with the help of perlbug 1.33 running under perl v5.7.1.


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[Please enter your report here]

In older Perls, notably 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 at least, inf and infinity
used to represent the concept of a very large number indeed, a la
IEEE:
 
# the following prints "smaller" 
perl5.6.1 -e 'print 4 < infinity ? "smaller" : "not smaller" 
 
In latest bleadperl as of 5 mins ago: 
# the following prints "not smaller" 
~/bleadperl/bin/perl5.7.1 -e 'print 4 < infinity ? "smaller" : "not smaller"' 
 
I couldn't find any documentation on the topic in the PODs, Changes, 
or p5p archive (apart from "Infinity is now recognized as a number." 
in the 5.6.1 announcement), but numeric.c (in Perl_grok_number) and 
sv.c (in Perl_sv_inc) do have a concept of IS_NUMBER_INFINITY. 

I'm not sure if this is a problem. However, it is a change in
behaviour on the same platform between Perl versions, so I though I'd
report it. Is this due to the "nuke strtol" thread perhaps?

[Please do not change anything below this line]
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---
Flags:
    category=core
    severity=low
---
Site configuration information for perl v5.7.1:

Configured by acme at Tue Jun 26 16:49:00 BST 2001.

Summary of my perl5 (revision 5.0 version 7 subversion 17) configuration:
  Platform:
    osname=linux, osvers=2.2.14, archname=i586-linux
    uname='linux ns0.astray.com 2.2.14 #2 tue mar 7 12:20:23 gmt 2000 i586 unknown '
    config_args='-ds -e -Dusedevel -Dprefix=/home/acme/bleadperl'
    hint=recommended, useposix=true, d_sigaction=define
    usethreads=undef use5005threads=undef useithreads=undef usemultiplicity=undef
    useperlio=define d_sfio=undef uselargefiles=define usesocks=undef
    use64bitint=undef use64bitall=undef uselongdouble=undef
  Compiler:
    cc='cc', ccflags ='-Wall -fno-strict-aliasing -I/usr/local/include -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64',
    optimize='-O2',
    cppflags='-Wall -fno-strict-aliasing -I/usr/local/include'
    ccversion='', gccversion='egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)', gccosandvers=''
    intsize=4, longsize=4, ptrsize=4, doublesize=8, byteorder=1234
    d_longlong=define, longlongsize=8, d_longdbl=define, longdblsize=12
    ivtype='long', ivsize=4, nvtype='double', nvsize=8, Off_t='off_t', lseeksize=8
    alignbytes=4, usemymalloc=n, prototype=define
  Linker and Libraries:
    ld='cc', ldflags =' -L/usr/local/lib'
    libpth=/usr/local/lib /lib /usr/lib
    libs=-lnsl -lndbm -lgdbm -ldb -ldl -lm -lc -lposix -lcrypt -liconv -lutil
    perllibs=-lnsl -ldl -lm -lc -lposix -lcrypt -liconv -lutil
    libc=/lib/libc-2.1.2.so, so=so, useshrplib=false, libperl=libperl.a
  Dynamic Linking:
    dlsrc=dl_dlopen.xs, dlext=so, d_dlsymun=undef, ccdlflags='-rdynamic'
    cccdlflags='-fpic', lddlflags='-shared -L/usr/local/lib'

Locally applied patches:
    DEVEL10929

---
@INC for perl v5.7.1:
    /home/acme/bleadperl/lib/5.7.1/i586-linux
    /home/acme/bleadperl/lib/5.7.1
    /home/acme/bleadperl/lib/site_perl/5.7.1/i586-linux
    /home/acme/bleadperl/lib/site_perl/5.7.1
    /home/acme/bleadperl/lib/site_perl
    .

---
Environment for perl v5.7.1:
    HOME=/home/acme
    LANG=en_US
    LANGUAGE (unset)
    LC_ALL=en_US
    LD_LIBRARY_PATH (unset)
    LOGDIR (unset)
    PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/home/acme/bin
    PERL_BADLANG (unset)
    SHELL=/bin/bash

• [ID 20010626.003] No more infinity by Leon Brocard
• Re: [ID 20010626.003] No more infinity by Tony Bowden
• Re: [ID 20010626.003] No more infinity by Hugo