Scripting
Number manipulation
With Lua you can perform various operations and manipulations on numeric values. Whether you want to perform basic arithmetic calculations, round numbers, generate random numbers or convert between different numeric representations, Lua provides you with a variety of functions and operators to effectively manipulate numbers.
Basic arithmetic operations
Lua supports standard arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division using the well-known arithmetic operators: +, -, *, and /.
Example:
local num1 = 10
local num2 = 5
local sum = num1 + num2 -- sum will be 15
local difference = num1 - num2 -- difference will be 5
local product = num1 * num2 -- product will be 50
local quotient = num1 / num2 -- quotient will be 2
Exponentiation
To raise a number to a power, you can use the exponentiation operator ^.
Example:
local base = 2
local exponent = 3
local result = base ^ exponent -- result will be 8
Modulus
The modulus operator % calculates the remainder after division.
Example:
local num1 = 10
local num2 = 3
local remainder = num1 % num2 -- remainder will be 1
Rounding functions
Lua provides built-in functions for rounding numbers:
math.floor(): Rounds a number downwards to the nearest integer.math.ceil(): Rounds a number upwards to the nearest integer.math.round(): Rounds a number to the nearest integer.
Example:
local num = 3.6
local rounded_down = math.floor(num) -- rounded_down will be 3
local rounded_up = math.ceil(num) -- rounded_up will be 4
local rounded_nearest = math.round(num) -- rounded_nearest will be 4
Converting numbers to strings
To convert a number to a string, you can use the function tostring().
Example:
local num = 42
local str = tostring(num) -- str will be "42"
Converting strings to numbers
To convert a string to a number, you can use the function tonumber().
Example:
local str = "123"
local num = tonumber(str) -- num will be 123 (a number, not a string)
Number formatting
With the function string.format() you can format numbers as strings with certain precision.
Example:
local pi = 3.14159
local formatted_pi = string.format("%.2f", pi) -- formatted_pi will be "3.14"
Generating random numbers
Lua provides the function math.random() to generate pseudo-random numbers.
Syntax:
local random_number = math.random([min], max)
Example:
local random_num1 = math.random() -- Random number between 0 and 1
local random_num2 = math.random(1, 100) -- Random number between 1 and 100
Note that math.random() generates numbers between 0 and 1 if no arguments are provided. To get a random integer within a specific range, you can specify the min and max arguments.
