basemap crashes with no error message when passed numpy nan's

[mnky9800n]

When passing a value when creating the Basemap object, if that value is a numpy.nan then python 2.x crashes on windows.

This example code crashes in an ipython 2.7 notebook.

minlat = np.nan
maxlat = np.nan
minlon = np.nan
maxlon = np.nan
m = Basemap(projection='merc'
            , llcrnrlat=minlat
            , urcrnrlat=maxlat
            , llcrnrlon=minlon
            , urcrnrlon=maxlon)

I think the expected behavior would be a ValueError or something like that so that it is easier to debug. Instead of a message like this:

[WeatherGod]

You get that windows message because python is segfaulting. If executed in
the terminal, you get the following:

ben@tigger:~$ python
Python 2.7.10 |Continuum Analytics, Inc.| (default, May 28 2015, 17:02:03)
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-1)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Anaconda is brought to you by Continuum Analytics.
Please check out: http://continuum.io/thanks and https://binstar.org
>>> import numpy as np
>>> from mpl_toolkits.basemap import Basemap
>>> minlat = np.nan
>>> maxlat = np.nan
>>> minlon = np.nan
>>> maxlon = np.nan
>>> m = Basemap(projection='merc'
...             , llcrnrlat=minlat
...             , urcrnrlat=maxlat
...             , llcrnrlon=minlon
...             , urcrnrlon=maxlon)
GEOS_ERROR: IllegalArgumentException: Points of LinearRing do not form a
closed linestring
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

[WeatherGod]

In any case, I think this is inadvertently fixed by matplotlib/basemap#261. Passing nans in for those parameters will raise a ValueError, regardless of the projection (before, those parameters were only validated for certain projections like lcc and such).

[tacaswell]

Closing this as it is really a basemap bug.