JS: int / int = int ?

Unity Engine
1

Very strange, I am dividing an int by an int and I am getting an int. when I divide the int by a float however, I am getting a float as I would expect…

var nTicks = 100;
var motorFactor : float = 1.0;
	motorFactor = 0.0;
	for (var i = 0; i< nTicks; i++)
	{
		motorFactor = i/nTicks;
		yield WaitForFixedUpdate();
	}
	motorFactor = 1.0;
2

It’s not strange, it’s expected behavior. You can use parseFloat if you want to force something to evaluate as a float.

–Eric

3

This is true for almost all programming languages. In an expression involving several types, they are promoted to the type that is of highest precision/range of all of them.

So:
float int operation = float result
int int operation = int result (since highest presision/range of arguments is still int)

4

That is interesting, it took me by surprise as I was relying on JS duck typing doing all the work, in this case determining that the operation should be done in the precision of the = variable.
I suppose most languages do that for optimization ?

5

Well, consider how would you then access plain integer division? Or, how would it know whether or not you want a double or a float?

Cheers,
-Jon