Re: math.min, math.max

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

On Wednesday, April 9, 2014, Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@inf.puc-rio.br> wrote:
> > Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 1. If the argument list always has a first element, there is no reason to
> > > stay with numbers. Anything for which less-than is defined can work.
> >
> > This could be useful! Actually, if you asked me if this was already
> > the behavior, I wouldn't know it for sure.
>
> This is how it is implemented now (for the next work version). The
> main motivation is for working correctly with integers, too:
>
> > math.max(4611686018427387901, 461168601842738790)  --> 4611686018427387901
>
> The original version would lose precision in that case.
>
> -- Roberto

In the case that this feed back is helpful:

I would continue to patch math max and min to accept (nil) as valid and to have it return nil in that case. 

If huge or -(huge) were the result of (nil), I probably would not patch it and instead change the logic in my code to use the new result, but it doesn't sound like this would be correct.