6.2.3 Handling Exceptions

Exception handling according to the IEEE standard is the default on SPARC and x86 processors. However, there is a difference between detecting a floating-point exception and generating a signal for a floating-point exception (SIGFPE).

Following the IEEE standard, two things happen when an untrapped exception occurs during a floating-point operation:

• The system returns a default result. For example, on 0/0 (invalid), the system returns NaN as the result.

• A flag is set to indicate that an exception is raised. For example, 0/0 (invalid), the system sets the “invalid operation” flag.