Issue #5713 has been updated by John Firebaugh. The execution path of 0 ** -Bignum goes to Rational(0) ** -Bignum, so I think the issue is there. I.e. Rational(0) ** -Bignum should raise ZeroDivisionError, the same as Rational(0) ** -Fixnum. ---------------------------------------- Bug #5713: Fixnum#** returns Infinity for 0 ** negative Bignum http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/5713 Author: John Firebaugh Status: Open Priority: Normal Assignee: Marc-Andre Lafortune Category: Target version: ruby -v: ruby 1.9.3p0 (2011-10-30 revision 33570) [x86_64-darwin10.8.0] =begin Instead it should raise ZeroDivisionError, the same as negative Fixnums. wordsize = 8 * 1.size fixnum_min = -2 ** (wordsize - 2) def zero_power(exp) 0 ** exp rescue ZeroDivisionError "ZeroDivisionError" end [-1, fixnum_min, (fixnum_min-1)].each {|i| puts zero_power(i)} =end -- http://redmine.ruby-lang.org