Integers are whole, non-fractional numbers. In Squirrel, integers are 32 bits long and are always signed: they can be positive or negative.
Integers are scalar values: adding an integer to two entities, such as a pair of arrays, will store two independent copies of the integer’s value. Passing an integer into one of a function’s parameters as an argument will likewise create a new copy of the value.
An integer’s four bytes are stored in little endian order: the least significant byte in memory location n and the most significant byte in memory location n+4.
Calling typeof on an integer returns the string "integer".
Squirrel supports characters as integer literals. The variable is assigned the Ascii code of the character literal, which must be placed within single quote marks. For example:
local someValue = '*';
server.log(someValue);
// Displays '42'
Note You can include only one character between single quote marks; impCentral’s syntax checker will reject code that contains multiple characters between single quotes with the error constant too long.
Integers have access to a number of delegate methods to help with value conversion.
tochar() — Returns the target integer as a single-character string. The integer value should lie between -127 and 128, but Squirrel will accept integers out of this range and simply derive the character value from the lowest eight bits of the passed value.
local someValue = 42;
server.log(someValue.tochar());
// Displays '*'
tofloat() — Returns the target integer value as a float.
local someValue = 42;
server.log(someValue.tofloat());
// Displays '42.0'
tostring() — Returns a string representation of the target integer.
local someValue = 42;
server.log(someValue.tostring());
// Displays '42'
Floats are fractional numbers. In Squirrel, floats are 32 bits long and can be positive or negative.
Floats are scalar values: adding a float to two entities, such as a pair of arrays, will store two independent copies of the float’s value. Passing a float into a function as an argument will likewise create a new copy of the value.
Calling typeof on a float returns the string "float".
Floats have access to a number of delegate methods to help with value conversion.
tochar() — Returns the target float as a single-character string.
local someValue = 42.0;
server.log(someValue.tochar());
// Displays '*'
tointeger() — Returns the target float value as an integer.
local someValue = 42.0;
server.log(someValue.tofloat());
// Displays '42'
tostring() — Returns a string representation of the target float.
local someValue = 42.01;
server.log(someValue.tostring());
// Displays '42.01'
Booleans, aka ‘bools’, are single-byte integers representing either of the binary states true or false, both of which are identified as such in code.
local isConnected = true;
local isConnecting = false;
However, bools can be converted to integers and floats, with true becoming 1 and false 0:
local aBool = true;
local anInt = aBool.tointeger(); // 'aInt' equals 1
local aFloat = aBool.tofloat(); // 'aFloat' equals 1.0
Many statements using operators result in the generation of a boolean value. For example, (x == y) will evaluate to true if the values of x and y are the same, otherwise it will evaluate to false. We’ll see in the program control chapter how that result can be used to cause Squirrel to choose one code path among several.
Bools are scalar values: adding a bool to two entities, such as a pair of arrays, will store two independent copies of the bool’s value. Passing a bool into a function as an argument will likewise create a new copy of the value.
Calling typeof on a bool returns the string "bool".
Booleans have access to a number of delegate methods to help with value conversion:
tofloat() — Returns the target bool as a float. See above for an example.
tointeger() — Returns the target bool as an integer. See above for an example.
tostring() — Returns a string representation of the target bool.
local aBool = true;
server.log(aBool.tostring());
// Displays 'true'