Re: Lua 5.3 work1 Considering math.isinteger or type()

[Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@...>]

On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 2:28 AM, David Demelier
<demelier.david@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2013/7/25 Petite Abeille <petite.abeille@gmail.com>:
>>
>> On Jul 17, 2013, at 10:10 AM, David Demelier <demelier.david@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I just hope that one of these 2 solutions will be approved and added
>>> for the final Lua 5.3
>>
>> What about neither?
>>
>> Out of curiosity… as the 46 (and counting) messages in this thread haven't made it very clear, at least to me… why do we even care if a number is an integer, float, real, double, whatnot? Isn't the purpose of that int vs. float dichotomy to be purely an implementation detail? Wholly transparent? And a number stays a number? Irrespectively of internal representation? Or?
>>
>> Joshua Jensen, all the way back on July 6, 2 bazillions messages ago, in reply to "[ANN] Lua 5.3.0 (work1) now available", said:
>>
>> "I played around with this a bit.  The only thing I found that appears to be missing is the ability to determine the actual type of the number. "
>>
>> To which LHF replied:
>>
>> "One shouldn't need to do this but you can do it as follows: … --[[ clever piece of Lua code here ]]--"
>>
>
> The first idea was to add the complement of math.isfloat so it's
> easier to use without the need to remember which function is available
> to know the subtype.
>
> But then, a lot of user thought that better ideas could be used such
> as __type metamethod and such.
>
> --
> Demelier David
>

I believe that the this thread was hijacked (I'm guilty) by a larger
discussion on type. Sorry about that!

-Andrew