Ask Slashdot: What's the Harm In a Default Setting For Div By Zero?

New submitter CodeInspired writes: After 20 years of programming, I've decided I'm tired of checking for div by zero. Would there be any serious harm in allowing a system wide setting that said div by zero simply equals zero? Maybe it exists already, not sure. But I run into it all the time in every language I've worked with. Does anyone want their div by zero errors to result in anything other than zero?

Comments

Re:Idiot

[frovingslosh]

Absolute idiot. Reminds me of a time years ago when I was working at a University computer center. Despite my cultivated angry looks, a student came up to me with a printout and asked "Uh, what does this mean?" I said, "Oh, you want me to read it to you? It says: Error -divide by zero on line 50." I got a blank stare. So after a minute I further said" It means you are trying to divide by zero on line 50 of your code, which of course you can't do." That was responded to with another blank stare. So I said "look, here is line 50. See those two variables that you are multiplying together and then dividing into those other numbers? One of them must be reaching zero. Since you can't divide by zero the computer is trying to tell you that something has gone wrong. Go back, print out the variables inside the loop right before line 50 and see which one reaches zero. Then figure out why it is zero." The student said nothing and wandered away, apparently unhappy that I just didn't write the code for her.

A few days later one of the student operators who worked for me there said to me "Remember that girl that you tried to help with the divide by zero problem? She's getting a B+ in her computer science class." Such is the state of the education system. This was a while ago, but as far as I can tell, and this post indicates, things have no gotten any better.

No, you don't just ignore this problem and you absolutely don't put a system wide rule in effect to ignore the problem. If you get such an error it indicates a very fundamental problem wit the logic of the program. It is not trivial, and in real world situations could be deadly.

And you don't just return the largest system number rather than zero, as some other idiots have suggested. That would be just as wrong and just as dangerous.

And if you are really seeing this error often, I strongly suggest a change in profession to a short order chef.