Re: 22.1.50; calc-math.el patch: fix non-termination

[Jay Belanger <jay.p.belanger@gmail.com>]

Markus Triska <markus.triska@gmx.at> writes:

> With the OS I'm currently working on, the result of (expt 10.0 x) is
> 1.0e+INF for x >= 309, i.e., no range error is triggered.

I don't know why I thought `expt' would necessarily give a range error
when it's too large; the documentation is silent on this matter.
I take it there are three possibilities for large x:  expt will give
an error, it will give infinity, or it will give 0.

> This patch to calc-math.el prevents non-termination when loading the
> file.

There was talk about adjusting `expt' to give a range error for large
x; if that doesn't happen then something like Markus's patch (I'll
tweak it to take care of the 0 case, for example) will be needed.

Using the 15 line convention, this patch is borderline tiny, but
Markus's name appears several times in the lisp Changelogs.  Do we
have copyright papers for him/you?

Jay