you don't want to "strip the selector". the selector is there to hint at
the type (at least in the case of 'float' and 'symbol'), but it cannot
change the type of the atom (symbol:'1' vs float:1).

what you do want is to convert a symbol into a number.

attached is a vanilla [symbol2int] implementation

i leave it as an exercise to the reader to turn it into a [symbol2float] :-)


gfdmsr
IOhannes