Re: Request for comments: string variable patchset 2

[Juergen W. <wie...@fr...>]

Am Mittwoch, 13. Oktober 2004 20:01 schrieb Ethan Merritt:
> > I was expecting more feedback, but maybe "no news = good news".
> > Yes, the core code can probably go into cvs.  The add-ons
> > should get more discussion. I'll start separate threads for
> > each.
>
> The string variables "extra features" patch (#1043790)
> only contains two features right now:
>
> 1) String variables are auto-promoted to numbers if they are
>    encountered during evaluation of an arithmetic expression.
>    e.g:   (3 == "1" + "2")  evaluates to TRUE
>
> 2) Integers are auto-promoted to strings if they are encountered
>    during evaluation of a string expression.
>    e.g.:
> 	N = N + 1
> 	filename = "run_" . N . ".dat"
> 	print filename
> 		run_4.dat
>
> I am not aware of any problems introduced by either feature,
> but comments are welcome.


I'm not sure if this one is really needed.  I would rather like to
have a builtin function "atof" to explicitly cast strings to
numbers.  The other way round is done by sprintf.  This patch makes
the difference between numerical and string variables less clear.


Juergen