Perhaps February was “compiler modernization” month. The Linux kernel recently decided to move to the C11 standard for its code; Python has just undergone a similar process for determining which flavor of C to use for building its CPython reference implementation. A calculation in the CPython interpreter went awry when built with a pre-release version of the upcoming GCC 12; that regression led down a path that ended up with the adoption of C11 for CPython as well.
A bug that was fixed in early February started the ball rolling for Python. Victor Stinner encountered a GCC regression that caused CPython not to get the expected IEEE 754 floating-point NaN (not a number) value in a calculation. An LWN article sheds some light on NaNs (and how they are used in Python) for those who need a bit more background. The calculation was using the HUGE_VAL constant, which is defined as an ISO C constant with a value of positive infinity; the code set the value of the internal Py_NAN constant used by the interpreter to HUGE_VAL*0, which should, indeed, evaluate to a NaN. Multiplying infinity by any number is defined to be a NaN for IEEE 754.
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