Re: Issue: EXPT-ZERO-ZERO (Version 1)

[masinter.pa@Xerox.COM]

EXPT is a Lisp function that returns only an approximation of the
mathematical function that you want it to represent.

For the case of (EXPT rational integer), however, the behavior is well
defined, and there are no "limit" contradictions to consider. It is nice
that the floating point case concides with the rational/integer case for
arguments other than 0 0, and so there is no reason to make it differ for 0
0.

"Limit" arguments are inappropriate for reasoning about the definition of
floating point functions, since the behavior of the Lisp function and the
corresponding mathematical one differs considerably as soon as you
"approach" , say, least-positive-double-float, for example.