Re: [ANN] Lua 5.2.0 (work1) now available

[Miles Bader <miles@...>]

Vaughan McAlley <ockegheim@gmail.com> writes:
> The standard Lua bit library should only attempt operations that are
> predictable and portable over many platforms. It should be happy with
> catering to a proportion (80%?) of users’ needs. People requiring
> fancy or platform-specific operations can use a library or roll their
> own.

Er, arithmetic right-shifts are not "fancy or platform-specific"
operations, whatever the C standard says.

Indeed, the wacky 0.000001% platforms are the ones which don't support
arithmetic shifting... such platforms may have been more common in 1972,
but they are vanishingly rare now.  Attempting to "support" such
essentially non-existent platforms by limiting Lua in a way which hurts
the vast majority of platforms seems quite silly.

That C does so is more a historical quirk than anything else.

-Miles

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