According to sect 3.4.3 in the refman:
"The conversion from strings to numbers goes as follows: First, the
string is converted to an integer or a float, following its syntax
and the rules of the Lua lexer. (The string may have also leading
and trailing spaces and a sign.) Then, the resulting number is
converted to the required type (float or integer) according to the
previous rules."
Thus if I have a string which is "42" it should be coerced to an
integer, since 42 is parsed as an integer constant by the lexer,
whereas I get:
print( 43, "42" + 1 ) --> 43 43.0
where it seems that the addition is a float addition, signaling that
one of the operands is float. Is this a bug, an error in the refman
or maybe something on my side (Windows 7-64, using 32bit executables
compiled with TDM-GCC 4.9.2 32 bit)? Am I missing something?
You are missing the last sentence that you quoted! "Then, the resulting
number is converted to the required type (float or integer) according
to the previous rules." The "required type" in this case is a float, as
explained in the rule for addition (Section 3.4.1):
[...] the arithmetic operators work as follows: If both operands are
integers, the operation is performed over integers and the result is an
integer. Otherwise, if both operands are numbers or strings that can be
converted to numbers (see §3.4.3), then they are converted to floats,
[...]
