Type conversions not according to documentation

[tethal]

According to documentation, strings should be converted to numbers, but they seem to be converted to floats:

printf("%y\n", 4 / 2.2n);         # gives 1.818181818181818181818181818181818181814
printf("%y\n", 4 / "2.2");        # gives 1.81818182

(Tested with version 0.8.12, git hash: 2ee5c95)

[davidnich]

let's fix the docs and generally support implicit conversions to a float instead of a number since it's more efficient and let users use numbers only explicitly since they're expensive

[tethal]

These should be explained somehow as well:

$ qore -n -X 'number(0.1)'
0.10000000000000001
$ qore -n -X '0.1 + 1e20n'
100000000000000000000.1000000000000000099
$ qore -n -X '0.1 + 1e30n'
1000000000000000000000000000000.1
$ qore -n -X '0.1 + 1e40n'
10000000000000000000000000000000000000000.100000000000000010003
$ qore -n -X '0.1 + 1e100n'
10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.100000000000000010000000000000000000000085004940396

[gamato]

And perhaps it should be noted in docs even more that simple use cases like exp2(16) will actually execute number exp2(number) version of the function.

[davidnich]

@tethal the issue with the excess output is a result of the rounding heuristic - maybe we should try to improve the algorithm; current it requires 9 or 15 consecutive 0s or 9s before it decides that the rest is noise...

[davidnich]

docs have been corrected