Documentation on fun argument conversion is incorrect

[HertzDevil]

The docs say:

Note that there are no implicit conversions (except to_unsafe, which is explained later) when invoking a C function: you must pass the exact type that is expected. For integers and floats you can use the various to_... methods.

But this is not true:

lib LibC
  alias Int = Int32
  fun exit(status : Int) : NoReturn
end

LibC.exit(69_u8)   # okay
LibC.exit(69_i128) # okay

More surprising is that it is okay to pass a BigInt here too, but not its unsafe counterpart:

require "big"

LibC.exit(69.to_big_i)           # okay
LibC.exit(69.to_big_i.to_unsafe) # Error: argument 'x0' of 'LibC#exit' must be Int32, not Pointer(LibGMP::MPZ)

So something else must be going on.

[straight-shoota]

Yes, on fun calls, the compiler applies some special conversions for numeric parameters. If the argument responds to #to_i32!, this methods return value is used.

struct NotInt
  def to_i32!
    42
  end
end

LibC.exit(NoInt.new)

The implementation is very old and predates the more recent number autocasting which serves a similar purpose.

https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/blob/7982ff6533fd5f6cf5eda8a0be49987ef6775359/src/compiler/crystal/semantic/conversions.cr#L2-L21

Autocasting applies in more situations and is safer. Unchecked conversions such as BigInt#to_i32! can fail at runtime.

I believe we could probably retire these special numeric argument conversions for fun calls and replace them with general autocasting.