Re: require() passing arguments to module?

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@...>]

> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 10:10 PM, HyperHacker <hyperhacker@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I feel like this idea has been brought up before, but I don't recall
> > the consensus. Presently, require() accepts only one argument. Why not
> > change it to require(name, ...) and pass all additional args on to the
> > module? The module can then retrieve them from ... just as it would if
> > you did loadfile(name)(...).
> 
> Now sure about consensus, but in `loadfile(name)(...)` you are passing
> the arguments to the loader.  Once require loads a module it caches
> it.  So, if another call is later made to require for the same module
> but with different arguments, the new arguments are ignored because
> the loader is not re-invoked again.  You therefore have in a way a
> race condition where the behavior depends on the order in which
> modules are loaded.

+1 for this answer :)


> Sometimes I do things like `local X = require 'foo' (...)`, which
> achieves the desired effect.

Or, to follow the usual protocol of returning a plain table:

local X = require 'foo' .init(...)

(Now the module has the option of allowing its use without parameters.)

-- Roberto