Infinity or Exception in Java when divide by 0?

Consider the following code snippets:

public class Geeksforgeeks
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        double p = 1;
        System.out.println(p/0);
    }
}

Output:

Infinity

public class Geeksforgeeks
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        int p = 1;
        System.out.println(p/0);
    }
}

Output:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArithmeticException: / by zero
    at Geeksforgeeks.main(Geeksforgeeks.java:8)

Explanation: In the first piece of code, a double value is being divided by 0 while in the other case an integer value is being divide by 0. However the solution for both of them differs.

• In case of double/float division, the output is Infinity, the basic reason behind that it implements the floating point arithmetic algorithm which specifies a special values like “Not a number” OR “infinity” for “divided by zero cases” as per IEEE 754 standards.
• In case of integer division, it throws ArithmeticException.

This article is contributed by Pranjal Mathur. If you like GeeksforGeeks and would like to contribute, you can also write an article and mail your article to contribute@geeksforgeeks.org. See your article appearing on the GeeksforGeeks main page and help other Geeks.

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