[OT] ...

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 24 June 2016 at 21:11:52 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
> By treating 0^0 consistently as 1, you never run into this kind 
> of problem. Doesn't this demonstrate that they are doing it 
> wrong? How would you design the notation?

You really need to look at the context. It is not uncommon that 
solvers favour total functions where even division is defined for 
"x / 0", for very pragmatic reasons. So even a total function for 
power could be useful in some contexts (i.e. considered defined 
not only for "0^0", but also "0^-1").

However, IEEE754-2008 is more principled. It separates pow into 
power over natural numbers "pown" (where 0^0==1) and power over 
inexact reals "powr". This is rather clear from the exception 
thrown at "powr(1.0,inf)", as the inexact nature of a "1.0" 
floating point could take it towards 0, 1 or inf.

And you cannot really know if inexact reals of "0.0^0.0" should 
go towards 0.0 or 1.0. It would make most sense to return the 
interval of potential values: [0,1]