In Haskell, is there infinity :: Num a => a?

Question

I'm trying to implement a data structure where if I had the use of infinity for numerical comparison purposes, it would simply things greatly. Note this isn't maxBound/minBound, because a value can be <= maxbound, but all values would be < infinity.

No hope?

Answer 1

Well how about that! It turns out if you just type 1/0 it returns Infinity! On ghci:

Prelude> 1/0 Infinity Prelude> :t 1/0 1/0 :: (Fractional t) => t Prelude> let inf=1/0 Prelude> filter (>=inf) [1..] 

and then of course it runs forever, never finding a number bigger than infinity. (But see ephemient's comments below on the actual behavior of [1..])

Answer 2

infinity = read "Infinity"