the 1/0 parts rely on the implementation using IEEE floats, or at
least some float implementation that has both +/- infinity and +/- 0,
and that for integers in 5.3/5.4 there is no separate -0; if you build
Lua with only integer support, the code will not work.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Fixed:
local x, y = 2/1, 4; while x < y do x, y = x*x, y*y end
local f, t = function()return function()end end, {1, [1] = 4,
[false] = {3, 'Lua 5.1', 'Lua 5.4', 'LuaJIT'},
[true] = {2, 'Lua 5.2', 'Lua 5.3', 4}}
local version = t[f()==f()][t[x*x==y][t[1]]]
Lua 5.1/5.2 has a single numeric subtype (either float or int),
Lua 5.3/5.4 has both float and int.
The code tries to find two different subtypes of numbers.
x*x~=y means both subtypes have been found.
This code relies on the following two facts:
1) floats: for any positive integer k the value 2^k will be positive
2) integers: for some positive integer k the value 2^k will be non-positive
So, the code will work also with non-IEEE-754 FP implementations lacking
infinity and negative zero.
You may ask why the _expression_ 2/1 is used instead of the constant 2.0
The FP constant may raise a syntax error on Lua 5.1/5.2 built with integers
because strtol() would probably be invoked there instead of strtod().
At least I have built Lua 5.2 with int64 numbers and used strtol() there.
Is it the correct way to build Lua 5.2 with integers?
