tostring on non-table values adds quotes

[andrewstarks]

I must acknowledge the guilt I feel for using and benefiting from your work, only to complain about it here. I suck.

RIght now, ml.tstring helpfully adds quotes around values, which is great for visualizing and debugging. You can see exactly where the beginning or ending of input is!

local tostring = require'ml'.tstring
local t = {"3.0","meatballs"}

print(t[1], #t[1], tostring(t[1]), #tostring(t[1]), t[2], tostring(t[2]))
--> 3.0 3   "3.0"   5   meatballs   "meatballs"

When not debugging, I also use tostring for serializing...

local need_string = tostring(t[1])

Later, I might transform back into a number...

print(need_string, tonumber(need_string))
--> "3.0"   nil

Now that I know this, I can use ts = ml.tstring and use lua's version for normal stuff.

It might also be good to copy lua's behavior for non-table values, which would make it easier to inject.

I can imagine a preference for the other way, although I'm fine saying "'"..tostring(v).."'" for the few times that I need to do that.

Bloat is always an option... perhaps ml.tquoted or some such nonsense?