What does floating point error -1.#J mean?

What does floating point error -1.#J mean?

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Recently, sometimes (rarely) when we export data from our application, the export log contains float values that look like "-1.#J". I haven't been able to reproduce it so I don't know what the float looks like in binary, or how Visual Studio displays it. I tried looking at the source code for printf, but didn't find anything (not 100% sure I looked at the right version though...). I've tried googling but google throws away any #, it seems. And I can't find any lists of float errors. c++ c floating-point printf link | improve this question asked May 8 '09 at 14:32 Srekel 349 1 10 83% accept rate

See also: stackoverflow.com/questions/5541975/what-does-1-mean/… –  Loki Astari Apr 4 at 18:54 feedback

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It can be either negative infinity or NaN (not a number). Due to the formatting on the field printf does not differentiate between them. I tried the following code in Visual Studio 2008: double a = 0.0; printf("%.3g\n", 1.0 / a);  // +inf printf("%.3g\n", -1.0 / a); // -inf printf("%.3g\n", a / a);    //  NaN which results in the following output: 1.#J -1.#J -1.#J removing the .3 formatting specifier gives: 1.#INF -1.#INF -1.#IND so it's clear 0/0 gives NaN and -1/0 gives negative infinity (NaN, -inf and +inf are the only "erroneous" floating point numbers, if I recall correctly)