as.character on NaN gives "NaN", is that intentional?

It seems to me that preserving information about the kind of number 
(or not) present would be useful. I rather like the fact that
    as.numeric(as.character(NaN))
and
    as.numeric(as.character(Inf))
both work as the identity operator on numeric-like objects.  (In this 
context, note that both is.numeric(NaN) and is.numeric(Inf) both return 
TRUE.)  In your example, the character string "ee" does not represent 
any number that I know about (at least in standard R).

     Kevin

Dear DevelopeRs,

I am surprised about the outcome of the second command:

str(as.character(as.numeric("ee"))) str(as.character(log(-1)))

I would have expected a character NA. Is there an intention behind 
this behavior?

Best, Ulrike