Hey all! Recently I found out that dividing anything by 0 returns infinity, not the not a number that it should return. This is REALLY making it hard to program things that use complex(ish) math.

I hope this “problem” is sorted out soon!

(P.S. My browser / operating system: MacOS Macintosh X 10.8.5, Safari 6.1.5, Flash 14.0 (release 0), if it helps…)

Not everything - 0/0 gives you NaN.

Support. Or have a funny error.

forever
when I divide by zero :: events
say [OH NOES! YOU DIVIDED BY ZERO! SCRATCH IS GOING TO END!]
*weird effects that sound like the entire website will crash on you*
end

RedNeckSideKick wrote:

This is REALLY making it hard to program things that use complex(ish) math.

Could you give some examples?

Support!!!
Infinity is an idea, and not a number…
oh… infinity is not a number xD

But seriously, it should really result in NaN.

I thought it some definitions of mathematics x / 0 = infinity, probably because as y approaches 0 in x / y, x becomes larger.

And there's technically a workaround:

define divide (num1) by (num2)
if <(num2) = [0]> then
set [return v] to [NaN]
else
set [return v] to ((num1) / (num2))
end

I like infinity. If you think of how in x / y you can count up y by going y + y + y until you reach x. But with zero you can keep counting 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 on for infinity and never get to the divisor.

AonymousGuy wrote:

I thought it some definitions of mathematics x / 0 = infinity, probably because as y approaches 0 in x / y, x becomes larger.

That's wrong. Let me explain. Assuming, for convenience, that x is positive, that's true as y approaches zero but is positive, but if y is negative, then x / y is a large negative number. So, what's the result of something divided by zero? Is it positive or negative infinity? That's the problem with saying that something divided by zero is infinity.

You could also think of it like this: any number divided by zero is not infinity, because if you multiplied zero by infinity, you wouldn't get the original number; you'd just get zero.

djdolphin wrote:

Not everything - 0/0 gives you NaN.

I bet 0/0=0, as 0*0=0.

Julianthewiki wrote:

djdolphin wrote:

Not everything - 0/0 gives you NaN.

I bet 0/0=0, as 0*0=0.

No, obviously 0/0=9, because 9*0=0.

0/0 is everything. everything*0 = 0.

lalala3 wrote:

Julianthewiki wrote:

djdolphin wrote:

Not everything - 0/0 gives you NaN.

I bet 0/0=0, as 0*0=0.

No, obviously 0/0=9, because 9*0=0.

no
0/0=3.1415926… because 3.1415926…*0=0

No support. Just read infinity as not a number.

if <not<<((1)/(variable))=[Infinity]> or <((1)/(variable))=[NaN]>>> then

end

Guys, this is just how the language works… Also it's useful in scenarios where you need a “infinity” value.

no support , that'll break all projects using the 1/0 as infinity , also , whats wrong with infinity? u can code it into NaN anyways

No support, I think the reason that dividing by 0 returns infinity is because you can go 0+0+0+0+0… infinite times and you'll never get to the number that you're dividing.

CoolBoy4286 wrote:

No support, I think the reason that dividing by 0 returns infinity is because you can go 0+0+0+0+0… infinite times and you'll never get to the number that you're dividing.

Except the whole point of division is that repeated addition of the divisor times eventually results in the dividend. 0+0+0+0+0 will never reach any number, even if you add it infinite times. Returning infinity would imply that after adding 0 infinity times you will reach the dividend, which is often not the case!

Now for how computers do division, it's a rather computationally heavy process involving repeated subtraction, hence in the case of a divisor of 0 it would keep trying to subtract 0 from the number (which doesn't do anything), hence infinity sort of makes sense.

MrNanners wrote:

No support. Just read infinity as not a number.

if <not<<((1)/(variable))=[Infinity]> or <((1)/(variable))=[NaN]>>> then

end

If variable is set to -0 it will pass through because 1÷-0=-Infinity.

Scratch is coded in JavaScript, and unfortunately, 0/0 in JS returns NaN, and anything else/0 returns infinity. Don't ask why, it just does (I just checked). So JavaScript gets the same results as scratch, because scratch is coded in JS, scratch is just running by JS rules. So sadly, it is best to just find a workaround unless you want scratch to rewrite JS so they can fix a small problem.