Re: Wishful request for next version: '// 1' should produce integer

[Lorenzo Donati <lorenzodonatibz@...>]

On 03/01/2022 19:28, Flyer31 Test wrote:
> Hi,
> if in some furture version integer division // 1 would produce integer
> result, this would be very nice.
>
> Now only int // int produces integer, but float // int produces float,
> which somehow is a bit "ugly" for the result of an integer division.
>
> (I can of course write math.floor(2.5) instead of 2.5//1, but I
> somehow would like the second writing much more...).

Mmm, funnily I never noticed this.

I'm an old timer (since Lua 5.1) user, and although I welcomed the new 
operators in Lua 5.3, I never used // much.

I really wonder why // produces a float at all. It would make sense to 
always produce an integer.

Just having the oddball case of just "// 1" producing an integer goes 
against the principle of least surprise and probably could slow things 
down: every time the engine needed to perform // it would have to check 
whether or not to convert its result according to its 2nd operand.

I'd rather prefer to change the semantics of // to always return an 
integer, unless someone convince me the current behavior is more useful.
After all if you write "//" you probably want an integer, not a float 
with integer value.

Cheers!

-- Lorenzo