Type Casting

Paisley does not coerce values to other types, except in the case of conditionals, where types are coerced into booleans. (e.g. in if {123} then ... end, 123 is truthy)

In all other cases, values must be manually cast to different types by the programmer.

Casting to strings

• null - converts to an empty string "".
• true and false - convert to "1" and "0" respectively.
• numbers - convert to the usual decimal text representation.
• arrays - for historical reasons, arrays are cast to space-delimited strings, e.g. ("a",123,"b") is converted to "a 123 b".
• objects - for historical reasons, objects’ values and keys are cast to space-delimited strings, e.g. {"a" => 1, "b" => 2} is converted to "a 1 b 2"

Casting to numbers

• null - converts to zero.
• true and false - convert to 1 and 0 respectively.
• strings - if completely numeric, converts via the usual decimal text representation. Otherwise, converts to zero.
• arrays - always convert to zero.
• objects - always convert to zero.

Casting to booleans

• null - converts to false
• numbers - zero converts to false, anything else is true.
• strings - empty strings convert to false, anything else is true.
• arrays - empty arrays convert to false, anything else is true.
• objects - empty objects convert to false, anything else is true.

Other type-casting

Arrays and objects may be cast between each other, but nothing can be cast to an array or object (what would converting a number to an object even mean?). Instead, arrays and objects must be constructed using the supported syntax.