In Java, what does NaN mean?

Question

I have a program that tries to shrink a double down to a desired number. The output I get is NaN.

What does NaN mean in Java?

Answer 1

Taken from this page:

"NaN" stands for "not a number". "Nan" is produced if a floating point operation has some input parameters that cause the operation to produce some undefined result. For example, 0.0 divided by 0.0 is arithmetically undefined. Taking the square root of a negative number is also undefined.

Answer 2

NaN = Not a Number.

Answer 3

NaN means "Not a Number" and is the result of undefined operations on floating point numbers like for example dividing zero by zero. (Note that while dividing a non-zero number by zero is also usually undefined in mathematics, it does not result in NaN but in positive or negative infinity).

Answer 4

NaN means "Not a number." It's a special floating point value that means that the result of an operation was not defined or not representable as a real number.

See here for more explanation of this value.

Answer 5

Not a Java guy, but in JS and other languages I use it's "Not a Number", meaning some operation caused it to become not a valid number.

Answer 6

Means Not a Number. It is a common representation for an impossible numeric value in many programming languages.