C/C++ NaN constant (literal)?

Question

In C, NAN is declared in <math.h>.

In C++, std::numeric_limits<double>::quiet_NaN() is declared in <limits>.

But for checking whether a value is NaN, you can't compare it with another NaN value. Instead use isnan() from <math.h> in C, or std::isnan() from <cmath> in C++.

As others have pointed out you are looking for std::numeric_limits<double>::quiet_NaN() although I have to say I prefer the cppreference.com documents. Especially because this statement is a little vague:

Only meaningful if std::numeric_limits::has_quiet_NaN == true.

and it was simple to figure out what this means on this site, if you check their section on std::numeric_limits::has_quiet_NaN it says:

This constant is meaningful for all floating-point types and is guaranteed to be true if std::numeric_limits::is_iec559 == true.

which as explained here if true means your platform supports IEEE 754 standard. This previous thread explains this should be true for most situations.

This can be done using the numeric_limits in C++:

http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/limits/numeric_limits/

These are the methods you probably want to look at:

infinity()  T   Representation of positive infinity, if available.
quiet_NaN() T   Representation of quiet (non-signaling) "Not-a-Number", if available.
signaling_NaN() T   Representation of signaling "Not-a-Number", if available.

Is this possible to assign a NaN to a double or float in C ...?

Yes, since C99, (C++11) <math.h> offers the below functions:

#include <math.h>
double nan(const char *tagp);
float nanf(const char *tagp);
long double nanl(const char *tagp);

which are like their strtod("NAN(n-char-sequence)",0) counterparts and NAN for assignments.

// Sample C code
uint64_t u64;
double x;
x = nan("0x12345");
memcpy(&u64, &x, sizeof u64); printf("(%" PRIx64 ")\n", u64);
x = -strtod("NAN(6789A)",0);
memcpy(&u64, &x, sizeof u64); printf("(%" PRIx64 ")\n", u64);
x = NAN;
memcpy(&u64, &x, sizeof u64); printf("(%" PRIx64 ")\n", u64);

Sample output: (Implementation dependent)

(7ff8000000012345)
(fff000000006789a)
(7ff8000000000000)