 |
lua-l archive |
|
|
||
|
Nikolai Kondrashov wrote:
Jan de Vos wrote:I think the only reason is that it protects you from easy-to-make mistakes. For instance, which metamethod do you want to use when the left hand side of the inequality is the number? Should the '<' class-metamethod for 'number' handle all the different kinds of userdata types you want to compare to? The requirement that both sides be of the same type makes such problems go away.Thank you. It could be that I'm not very sharp today (or maybe ever), but why comparison handling is different from arithmetic handling? I.e. why should we use "getcomphandler" and not "getbinhandler"?
Atm all comparisons can be handled by EQ, LT, and LE. The VM only uses these (notted and operands switched where appropriate), and there are only metamethods for these.
To allow comparisons between different types, at least (I'm tired too) GE, GT would have to be added - and opcodes added to support these. At least to allow the selection to be made in an intuitive manner (ie, left value gets its metamethod called first if present, then second).
That's the only reason I can think of... but it is quite a biggy imo. Well, besides from the extra error checking (where you find a type has leaked out that wasn't supposed to get to a numeric compare, for example).
- Alex