You may want to read http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0754.html
Part of the text reads
The IEEE 754 standard defines a set of binary representations and
algorithmic rules for floating point arithmetic. Included in the
standard is a set of constants for representing special values,
including positive infinity, negative infinity, and indeterminate or
non-numeric results (NaN). Most modern CPUs implement the IEEE 754
standard, including the (Ultra)SPARC, PowerPC, and x86 processor
series.
Currently, the handling of IEEE 754 special values in Python depends
on the underlying C library. Unfortunately, there is little
consistency between C libraries in how or whether these values are
handled. For instance, on some systems "float('Inf')" will properly
return the IEEE 754 constant for positive infinity. On many systems,
however, this expression will instead generate an error message.
Jeff
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