The behavior of the comparison operations provided by the default (implicit) ordering on Float changed in 2.10.0 and 2.13.0. Prior to Scala 2.10.0, the Ordering instance used semantics consistent with java.lang.Float.compare.
Scala 2.10.0 changed the implementation of lt, equiv, min, etc., to be IEEE 754 compliant, while keeping the compare method NOT compliant, creating an internally inconsistent instance. IEEE 754 specifies that 0.0F == -0.0F. In addition, it requires all comparisons with Float.NaN return false thus 0.0F < Float.NaN, 0.0F > Float.NaN, and Float.NaN == Float.NaN all yield false, analogous None in flatMap.
Recognizing the limitation of the IEEE 754 semantics in terms of ordering, Scala 2.13.0 created two instances: Ordering.Float.IeeeOrdering, which retains the IEEE 754 semantics from Scala 2.12.x, and Ordering.Float.TotalOrdering, which brings back the java.lang.Float.compare semantics for all operations. The default extends TotalOrdering.
Because the behavior of Floats specified by IEEE is not consistent with a total ordering when dealing with NaN, there are two orderings defined for Float: TotalOrdering, which is consistent with a total ordering, and IeeeOrdering, which is consistent as much as possible with IEEE spec and floating point operations defined in scala.math.
This ordering may be preferable for numeric contexts.
An ordering for Floats which is a fully consistent total ordering, and treats NaN as larger than all other Float values; it behaves the same as java.lang.Float.compare.
An ordering for Floats which is a fully consistent total ordering, and treats NaN as larger than all other Float values; it behaves the same as java.lang.Float.compare.
Because the behavior of Floats specified by IEEE is not consistent with a total ordering when dealing with NaN, there are two orderings defined for Float: TotalOrdering, which is consistent with a total ordering, and IeeeOrdering, which is consistent as much as possible with IEEE spec and floating point operations defined in scala.math.
This ordering may be preferable for sorting collections.