newlib: pow function can produce incorrect results.

[Tim Prince]

cygcary@yahoo.com wrote:
> I'm not certain if this is a newlib compilation flag
> problem, something that has been fixed in the 1.15
> version of newlib or just that newlib does things
> differently. Looking at the 1.15 code implies that
> some of these should work and the rest appear to be a
> deviation from other systems. I tested this on my RH
> Linux enterprise 3 machine and got the expected
> results for everything. My cygwin is up to date.
> 
> First the ones that the 1.15 code says should work
> correctly: pow(1.0, nan) and pow(nan, 0.0) both should
> return 1.0. I'm currently getting nan for both of
> them.
> 
> The other ones are pow(1.0, inf), pow(-1.0, inf),
> pow(1.0, -inf) and pow(-1.0, -inf) which I believe
> should all return 1.0 as well. They are also returning
> nan. What's interesting about these are that if you
> look at
> http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/pow.html
> it describes exactly how to handle every case of x ^
> inf except for the case of positive 1. Maybe they are
> assuming we all remember that 1 raised to any power is
> 1.
> 

gcc has more serious conflicts with OpenGroup than this.  For example, 
PR31340 about the conflict between gcc testsuite cases and the OpenGroup 
raise() function, causing unjustified failure on cygwin.
<probably more off topic on cygwin than newlib list>
I don't see how pow(-1., inf) could be defined this way, unless you take 
the position that inf must have an even integral value.  These don't 
fall out as byproducts of a reasonable implementation; many of these 
would require special casing.  I didn't think newlib tries to implement 
NaN or Inf behaviors anyway.  Certainly, not much C99 is supported.  Do 
you have references on these points?

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