Re: Biggest Number

[Coda Highland <chighland@...>]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 2:39 PM, Matthias Dörfelt <lists@mokafolio.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> in C++ I often times use idioms like:
>
> auto shortestDistance = std::numeric_limits<float>::max()
> // …
> for(auto item : list)
> {
>         float dist = determineDistance(item);
>         if(dist < shortestDistance)
>         {
>                 // ...
>                 shortestDistance = dist;
>         }
> }
> // …
>
> After browsing for a while I could not find any similar constant to std::numeric_limits<float>::max() to get the biggest available number in lua. Is there one? If not, is there a reliable way to build my own function/constant?
>
> Thanks,
> Matthias

Lua uses double-precision floating-point numbers by default. The
largest value of that data type is 1.7976931348623157e+308.

That said, an even better choice would be positive infinity, which
isn't exactly a "value" inasmuch as you can't do math on it, but it
compares greater than any other numeric value. This is available via
"math.huge".

/s/ Adam