RE: Backslash-newline escape as a line continuation rather than a newline?

[Benoit Germain <bgermain@...>]

> Message d'origine De la part de Roberto Ierusalimschy
>
> The expression "1".."2"^3 would get a different meaning (1728, instead
> of "18"). The same for -"1".."2" (subtle difference) or #"3".."5".
> 

Pardon my ignorance, but what is the usefulness of being able to treat strings containing numbers as if they were numbers to begin with? Is this another "bad design decision" (to quote Luiz about something else if my memory serves me well) that nobody can get rid of because of the incompatibility it would entail? As much as I can understand that in the prehistoric Lua times this may have had some kind of meaning, now that Lua has mutated away from data description to be a full-fledged language this is more an annoyance than anything else. But this is purely *my* opinion :-).