thumb|An example of NaN appearing as a calculation error for input N/A on an electronic weather forecast In computing, NaN (), standing for Not a Number, is a particular value of a numeric data type (often a floating-point number) which is undefined as a number, such as the result of 0/0. Systematic use of NaNs was introduced by the IEEE 754 floating-point standard in 1985, along with the representation of other non-finite quantities such as infinities.
Article
16 sectionsContents
- Floating point
- Comparison with NaN
- Operations generating NaN
- Quiet NaN
- Signaling NaN
- Payload operations
- Encoding
- Canonical NaN
- Function definition
- Integer NaN
- Display
- References
- Notes
- Citations
- Standards
- External links
thumb|An example of NaN appearing as a calculation error for input N/A on an electronic weather forecast In computing, NaN (), standing for Not a Number, is a particular value of a numeric data type (often a floating-point number) which is undefined as a number, such as the result of 0/0. Systematic use of NaNs was introduced by the IEEE 754 floating-point standard in 1985, along with the representation of other non-finite quantities such as infinities.
In mathematics, the result of is typically not defined as a number and may therefore be represented by NaN in computing systems.