NaNs may also be explicitly assigned to variables, typically as a representation for missing values. Prior to the IEEE standard, programmers often used a special value (such as −99999999) to represent undefined or missing values, but there was no guarantee that they would be handled consistently or correctly.
nans may also be explicitly assigned to variables typically as a representation for missing values prior to the ieee standard programmers often used a special value (such as −99999999) to represent undefined or missing values but there was no guarantee that they would be handled consistently or correctly