Re: Bug in Lua when using signed long

["Alex Davies" <alex.mania@...>]

From: liam mail
> So you are saying that a configure script which sets up Lua before 
> compiling the library and does not
> check that types are large enough to pass a standard type and retrieve the 
> same type is not a bug?

I wouldn't consider it a bug at all.  I can say with confidence that the 
majority of users would prefer that their lua numbers were doubles then long 
doubles - even those running 64 bit.  Long doubles take up more space, 
increasing the size of the whole Lua union, and are only supported by legacy 
x87 (not SSE etc), which ironically isn't supported by x64 (AFAIK).  Meaning 
all floating point maths would have to be calculated in software.  The 
majority would prefer to be limited to 53 bits of mantissa then suffer the 
above, especially when you consider light_userdata can be used to store 
(against Ansi C as Mike Pall's pointed out) 64 bit integers at no increase 
in the union size.

It's just one of the catches of using floating point as the only form of 
maths.

- Alex