Re: evaluating numbers

[Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org>]

Paul, Eli, thank you for the replies.

> On Apr 29, 2020, at 0:05, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
>> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org>
>> Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 23:52:48 +0900
>> 
>>> The answer to "why" is "because that's how characters are
>>> implemented".  The answer to "how" is "by interpreting the integer as
>>> character when the context requires that".
>> 
>> I'm sorry to get back to this now, but I'm reading an introduction to C in French where I found:
>> 
>> "Une des particularités du type char en C est qu’il peut être assimilé à un entier: tout objet de type char peut être utilisé dans une expression qui utilise des objets de type entier. Par exemple, si c est de type char, l’expression c + 1 est valide."
>> 
>> Is that the reason why characters are integers in emacs lisp too ?
> 
> If you are asking why this happened historically, then I don't know: I
> wasn't there.  Maybe Richard can answer that.

@Eli Maybe historically but also generally speaking, is it more convenient to implement characters as integers because that was the way it is done in other languages like C (which plays an important part in Emacs) ?

@Paul I was asking about C because it seems to me that this part of emacs lisp is implemented in C, so if C does that then my uninformed idea is that it's easier create a similar implementation for emacslisp ?

Jean-Christophe Helary
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