Language Reference: Numbers

Pointless uses a single number type for integers and decimal numbers, which it stores using floating-point representation.

Important numerical functions include:

See the standard library Math module for more built-in functions for working with numbers.

Syntax

Numbers use familiar mathematical syntax.

120
3.14
-0.5

120
3.14
-0.5

Numbers can also use engineering notation.

1e-4
6.022e23

0.0001
6.022e+23

Operators

Mathematical operations use the following operators.

-8 -- Negation
5 + 5 -- Addition
20 - 4 -- Subtraction
6 * 7 -- Multiplication
3 / 12 -- Division
2 ** 4 -- Exponentiation
10 % 7 -- Modulus

-8
10
16
42
0.25
16
3

These operators obey the standard order of operations.

2 + 3 * (4 + 1)

17

Modulus Behavior

The modulus operator % uses the floor mod variant when operating on negative values, meaning that the result of a modulus operation will have the same sign as the divisor (the second operand).

10 % 7
-10 % 7
10 % -7
-10 % -7

3
4
-4
-3

Comparison

Numbers can be compared for equality using the equals == and not-equals != operators.

1 + 1 == 2
2 + 2 != 4

true
false

Numbers can also be compared using the inequality operators:

• < less-than
• > greater-than
• <= less-than-or-equal-to
• >= greater-than-or-equal-to

1 < 2
1 > 2
5 > 5
5 >= 5

true
false
false
true

Floating-point Error

Like any system based on floating-point arithmetic, the results of some numerical operations in Pointless involving non-integer values will be inexact. Watch out for this behavior when comparing non-integer values.

n = (Math.sqrt(5) * 2) ** 2
n

n == 20

20.000000000000004
false

Strictness

Pointless is stricter than many other languges when it comes to numerical operations. Calculations that would produce a NaN or infinity value in other languages will cause errors in Pointless.

-- Cannot take square root of a negative number
(-1) ** 0.5

Error: invalid arguments

-- Numerical overflow
10 ** 1000

Error: result out of range

Note that NaN and infinity values can be accessed via Math.nan and Math.inf.