Re: Lua workshop: call for backup presentations.

[David Jones <drj@...>]

On 24 Aug 2006, at 10:06, Andy Stark wrote:

> Lua list <lua@bazar2.conectiva.com.br> on Wednesday, August 23,  
> 2006 at
> 21:05 +0000 wrote:
> > It has become a tradition for
> > scripting languages to
> [let]
> > numbers come in
> > different kinds, by using coercion.
> ...
> > Is it worth discussing how Lua could
> > support more than one sort of number?
>
> Would it make sense to have binary coded decimal numbers as the  
> default
> numeric type for Lua?

No.  But it's a hilarious curved ball, and well worth thinking about.

Since bignums are part of Common Lisp they deserve to be on the  
roadmap for Lua.  Don't see why we should be wedded to a radix 10  
implementation though.

Of course, anyone wanting arbitrary precision arithmetic in Lua can  
do it now with Church numbers.

drj