handling T.min the right way

[Bill Baxter]

Frits van Bommel wrote:
> Daniel Keep wrote:
>>
>> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>> Also when you're say trying to find the maximum of a set of numbers it
>>> can be handy to initialize the 'current_max' to the smallest number
>>> possible.
>>>
>>> float max_val = float.min; // want the new meaning here
>>> int max_idx = -1;
>>> foreach(i,x; bunch_o_floats) {
>>>    if (x<max_val) {
>>>        max_val=x;
>>>        max_idx=i;
>>>    }
>>> }
>>>
>>> --bb
>>
>> I usually cheat and use nan, then change the comparison so that it will
>> succeed if 'x' is any real number :P
>>
>> That way, if I give it an empty list, I get nan back instead of
>> float.min, which could be misleading.
> 
> I'd use -float.infinity as the initial value. 

Yeh, I guess that's better.  I've just gotten used to working with 
languages where there's no portable way to get at nan and infinity 
constants.  But I guess D doesn't have that problem.  Yay D!

--bb