This avoids lots of unnecessary work when such streams are referred to via
fetch(), and so their bytes aren't subsequently read. This is a large
performance win on some files.
Now, it computes the numbers with only basic arithmetic operations, without first creating a string and then calling parseFloat.
The new function doesn't behave exactly the same as the old one.
In particular, the old behaviour was that when there was a number immediatly followed by an 'E', the 'E' was consumed. Now it's not. It allows for "glued" numbers and operators.
Also, the new function is faster and consumes less memory.