Re: Numeric key collision related bug in Lua 5.3

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@...>]

> An interesting bug has been found in Lua 5.3
> 
> t = {[(1<<63)-333] = 0}
> key = next(t) + 0.0
> t[key] = "Lua is great!"
> print(t[key])          --> Lua is great!
> t[0] = "Are you sure?"
> print(t[key])          --> nil
> 
> Why Lua is not great anymore?

The problem is the current definition of equality. The way it is
defined (compare integer-float converting the integer to float) makes
it non transitive:

> t1 = (1<< 62) + 1
> t2 = t1 + 2
> t3 = t1 + 0.0    -- will be rounded to 2^62
> print(t1 == t3, t2 == t3, t1 == t2)
   --> true	true	false

That is all good, until you try to put these values as indices
in a table. Because there is no transitivity, there is no
partition. Dependening on the order that these elements are compared
to each other, they will collide (or not) in different ways.

My guess is that the best sollution would be to change the definition
of equality (to a simpler one :-). Two numbers should be considered
equal if they represent the same mathematic value; period. (In terms
of implementation, it means that integer-float should be compared
converting the float to an integer; if the conversion fails, the numbers
cannot be equal.) That definition is simple, sounds sensible and
easy to explain, and makes equality transitive.

-- Roberto