Coercions and Conversions

3.4.3 – Coercions and Conversions

Lua provides some automatic conversions between some types and representations at run time. Bitwise operators always convert float operands to integers. Exponentiation and float division always convert integer operands to floats. All other arithmetic operations applied to mixed numbers (integers and floats) convert the integer operand to a float; this is called the usual rule. The C API also converts both integers to floats and floats to integers, as needed. Moreover, string concatenation accepts numbers as arguments, besides strings.

Lua also converts strings to numbers, whenever a number is expected.

In a conversion from integer to float, if the integer value has an exact representation as a float, that is the result. Otherwise, the conversion gets the nearest higher or the nearest lower representable value. This kind of conversion never fails.

The conversion from float to integer checks whether the float has an exact representation as an integer (that is, the float has an integral value and it is in the range of integer representation). If it does, that representation is the result. Otherwise, the conversion fails.

The conversion from strings to numbers goes as follows: First, the string is converted to an integer or a float, following its syntax and the rules of the Lua lexer. (The string may have also leading and trailing spaces and a sign.) Then, the resulting number (float or integer) is converted to the type (float or integer) required by the context (e.g., the operation that forced the conversion).

All conversions from strings to numbers accept both a dot and the current locale mark as the radix character. (The Lua lexer, however, accepts only a dot.)

The conversion from numbers to strings uses a non-specified human-readable format. For complete control over how numbers are converted to strings, use the format function from the string library (see string.format).