lnum* patches

[Asko Kauppi <askok@...>]

LNum patches is a place for any Lua number oriented patches:

http://luaforge.net/projects/lnum/


At an opening evening, I'll place there a recent 'lnum-290806.patch',  
alongside a full 'lua-5.1.1-patched.tgz' to try out. This patch  
presents an effort to make integer numbers live along, within the Lua  
core, and without shaking the boat all too much. The default number  
mode remains 'double' (all FP data); but integers are stored in the  
bytecode.

Other number modes, selectable simply by "make macosx MYCFLAGS=- 
DLUA_NUMBER_MODE_xxx" are:

  LUA_NUMBER_MODE_DOUBLE_INT64		int64 value range
  LUA_NUMBER_MODE_FLOAT_INT64		-''-
  LUA_NUMBER_MODE_DOUBLE_INT32		int32 value range, for non-FPU  
systems s.a.ARM
  LUA_NUMBER_MODE_FLOAT_INT32		-''-
  LUA_NUMBER_MODE_BCD_INT32		Binary Coded Decimal (tbd)
  LUA_NUMBER_MODE_COMPLEX		double + doublei (tbd)

This is a proof of concept, but for people needing to run Lua 5.1 on  
non-FPU platforms, it is already worth a try. API's etc. have  
remained; this should be 100% backward compatible with Lua.

Known bugs:
- LUA_NUMBER_MODE_FLOAT_INT64: 9+1 = 9.  Why??   (debugging help not  
turned back!)
- File IO with number types not tested		 (would You have time to  
test? :)
- Performance tests not run for ages... (but should be Good)

Note that the LNum patches site at LuaForge is not intended for this  
approach alone. It's there for _any_ number mode specific approaches,  
and discussions.

-asko


p.s. Oh, and the files can also be accessed by "svn co svn:// 
slugak.dyndns.org/public/lnum/" (daily changes)