[logicallee]

what about 0 * instead of 2 * ? On one hand by the viral property it would seem to also be unequal? On the other hand having zero NaN is something every equation already has :D it seems fair to silently remove a 0 * NaN term.

[mturmon]

It's not fair to remove 0 * NaN.

NaN will come up when doing

  Inf - Inf

But clearly:

  0 * (Inf - Inf)

cannot be said to be zero.

NaN really is not a number.

[hermitdev]

IIRC, but I don't have the IEEE spec in front of me, any operation, binary or unary, that has an operand of NaN shall have the result of NaN.

[Retra]

"0 * NaN" makes as much sense as "0 * Blue". It's NaN because you're trying to do something that is fundamentally not multiplication.

[logicallee]

thanks - makes sense and is a clear explanation.