FYI: Don't trust (read <entity handle>)

I was working on something that uses the handle as a key (in the form of a
symbol) and discovered this. You may encounter something like
"error: bad argument type: symbolp 1.#INF".
In this case the entity handle was "1E639". Well, (read "1E639") yields
1.#INF ! Type in 1e34, and then 1e639 if it still doesn't make sense.
1e639 is not a valid symbol because it is in the form of a number, even
though it is way beyond the valid numeric range.

So prefix your entity handles with some string before expecting them to read
to a symbol. :\ (BTW, I mainly posted this so that the next person like me
that google searches for "1.#INF" might get more than two useful hits!)
Well, that was fun.

 

Command: (read "1E308")
1.0e+308

Command: (read "1E309")
1.#INF

Must be the cut off for an infinite number?

Hmmm...


Bill

 

Command: (read "1E-323")
9.88131e-324

Command: (read "1E-324")
0.0

Command: (read "1E-325")
0.0

Interesting.