c++ division by 0

Question

I am running long simulations. I record the results into a vector to compute statistics about the data. I realized that, in theory, those samples could be the result of a division by zero; this is only theoretical, I am pretty sure it's not the case. In order to avoid rerunning the simulation after modifying the code, I was wondering what happens in that case. Would I be able to realize whether a division by 0 has occurred or not? Will I get error messages? (Exceptions are not being handled at the moment).

Thanks

Answer 1

For IEEE floats, division of a finite nonzero float by 0 is well-defined and results in +infinity (if the value was >zero) or -infinity (if the value was less than zero). The result of 0.0/0.0 is NaN. If you use integers, the behaviour is undefined.

Answer 2

Note that C standard says (6.5.5):

The result of the / operator is the quotient from the division of the first operand by the second; the result of the % operator is the remainder. In both operations, if the value of the second operand is zero, the behavior is undefined.

So something/0 is undefined (by the standard) both for integral types and Floating points. Nevertheless most implementations have fore mentioned behavior (+-INF or NAN).

Answer 3

If you're talking integers then your program should crash upon division by zero.

If you're talking floats then division by zero is allowed and the result to that is INF or -INF. Now it's all up to your code if the program will crash, handle that nicely or continue with undefined/unexpected results.