coercion to strings and numbers (was: recursively traverse...)

[Doug Rogers <rogers@...>]

Rici Lake wrote:

> Mark Hamburg wrote:
>> I have to say that the automatic coercion between strings and numbers
>> in the Lua API is one of my least favorite features. ...
>> Furthermore, it would be nice if luaL_tostring was essentially the
>> same as invoking tostring ... so that it could handle arbitrary objects.

> I agree, wholeheartedly.

Sorry for the late entry, but I just wanted to cast my vote along with
Mark and Rici.

Perhaps there are some subtle side effects I'm missing. I have enjoyed
the benefits of the coercion when I'm typing at the interpreter, but
often that amounts to simple things like:

> print('n = ' .. n)

I would not mind having to type:

> print('n = ' .. tostring(n))

Wouldn't the __concat metamethod for strings handle that, though?

Doug

-- 
Doug Rogers   03CF-7D28-E4B1-9A56 Least 4x4+Binary magic square
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