Reputation: 54100
How can I determine if a Cocoa NSNumber
represents NaN (not a number)?
This emerges, for example, when I parse a string that has an invalid (non-numeric) contents.
Upvotes: 53
Views: 26098
Reputation: 41
Any Boolean expression with NaN will always return false. But how is that useful?
I was getting Nan back from locationInView: while handling some gestures in an iPhone app. And was very pleased to find that any Boolean expression with NaN will always return false. I put this to use liek below:
//I was using the UIPanGestureRecognizer
, and seems that on TouchUp I would get Nan for the /location .x - .y - pretty reasonible since in this case the end of a touch doesnt have a location.
CGPoint location = [gestureRecognizer locationInView:self];
if ( location.x != location.x || location.y != location.y )
{
return;
}
So then as long .x and .y or legitimate float values, of course they will never be not equal to there own value. BUT in the case of .x or .y being NaN, the comparison will be false. And I can safely avoid computations with Nan.
Upvotes: 0
Reputation: 1160
We can also use a #define defined in math.h as follws
if(isnan(myNumber))
{ // myNumber is NaN .
}
Upvotes: 3
Reputation: 12041
To determine if NSNumber is a NaN, convert it to a double and use the C function isnan()
:
NSNumber *validNumber = [NSNumber numberWithDouble: 1.];
NSLog( @"%d", isnan(validNumber.doubleValue) ); // prints "0"
NSNumber *nanNumber = [NSNumber numberWithDouble: 0./0.];
NSLog( @"%d", isnan(nanNumber.doubleValue) ); // prints "1"
However, you should be careful, because there are other special values, for example:
NSNumber *posInfinity = [NSNumber numberWithDouble: 1./0.];
NSLog( @"%d", isnan(posInfinity.doubleValue) ); // prints "0"
If you want to check for these values as well, it's better to use isnormal()
instead:
NSLog( @"%d", isnormal(validNumber.doubleValue) ); // prints "1"
NSLog( @"%d", isnormal(nanNumber.doubleValue) ); // prints "0"
NSLog( @"%d", isnormal(posInfinity.doubleValue) ); // prints "0"
Upvotes: 12
Reputation: 101
I found that this works, but is it legal?
NSNumber *NaN = [NSDecimalNumber notANumber];
NSDecimalNumber *x = ... fill it somehow with NaN content ...
if ( x == NaN ) ... this works
is NaN
guaranteeed to be a singleton
constant value? Would be cool, but I suppose it is not, since all examples I found use the isEqual
methods.
Upvotes: 10
Reputation: 18333
For decimals, at least:
[[NSDecimalNumber notANumber] isEqualToNumber:myNumber]
Upvotes: 15
Reputation: 14558
As Mike Abdullah says, the natural way to represent a NaN in Cocoa is with nil
, but [NSNumber numberWithDouble:NAN]
does return a valid object. There is no NSNumber
-specific way of detecting this, but the general way, isnan([foo doubleValue])
, works. If you don’t like functions, you can stick it in a category.
Upvotes: 19
Reputation: 15013
There isn't really such an object for NSNumber since if it's not a number, then, well, it's not an NSNumber. It's more usual to use a nil object to represent this.
Upvotes: -3
Reputation: 54100
So, I found out that the class property [NSDecimalNumber notANumber]
is just for this purpose. In some languages NaN != NaN, but this isn't the case in Cocoa.
Upvotes: 75