~= is a poor choice in and of itself, because it doesn't have any clear justification. It would make some marginal sense in C, where it's binary negation, but that's not the case in Lua - it only ever uses ~ to mean "not" in that one context of inequality.
And, on the other hand, ~= looks too much like an attempt to spell out ≅ in ASCII, but the meaning is completely different.
If anything, /= (as used in Algol-68, Ada, Eiffel etc) makes a great deal more sense as an obvious rendering of ≠. It's unfortunate that C confused matters by reusing it as assignment.
And, on the other hand, ~= looks too much like an attempt to spell out ≅ in ASCII, but the meaning is completely different.
If anything, /= (as used in Algol-68, Ada, Eiffel etc) makes a great deal more sense as an obvious rendering of ≠. It's unfortunate that C confused matters by reusing it as assignment.