Re: The meaning of 'sugar' [Forked from Re: Why do we have ipairs?]

[Philipp Janda <siffiejoe@...>]

Am 13.06.2014 09:07 schröbte Ross Bencina:
> On 13/06/2014 4:13 PM, Thomas Jericke wrote:
> > > I'll leave it to others to determine whether using string literals in
> > > an interface is ever good style.
> > >
> > > Ross.
> > Show me a Lua API that doesn't use string literals.
> >
> > local myLib = require "MyLib" -- Oops a string literal
> > myLib.myFunction()
> > -- which is syntactic sugar for:
> > myLib["myFunction"]() -- Oops, another one.
> >
> > So without sting literals, you cannot use globals, require, access table
> > elements of type string.
>
> You're intentionally twisting my words.
>
> It's one thing to be able to use a string literal, quite enough to
> require its use in an interface.
>
> We're not talking about module or function names here, we're talking
> about constants that are usually integers.

In Lua:
    collectgarbage( "collect" )
    collectgarbage( "stop" )
    collectgarbage( "restart" )
    collectgarbage( "count" )
    ...
    f:seek( "cur", 0 )
    f:seek( "set", 0 )
    f:seek( "end", 0 )
    ...
    os.setlocale( "en_US.UTF8", "all" )
    os.setlocale( "en_US.UTF8", "numeric" )
    os.setlocale( "en_US.UTF8", "monetary" )
    ...

In C:
    lua_gc( L, LUA_GCCOLLECT, 0 );
    lua_gc( L, LUA_GCSTOP, 0 );
    lua_gc( L, LUA_GCRESTART, 0 );
    lua_gc( L, LUA_GCCOUNT, 0 );
    ...
    fseek( f, 0, SEEK_CUR );
    fseek( f, 0, SEEK_SET );
    fseek( f, 0, SEEK_END );
    ...
    setlocale( LC_ALL, "en_US.UTF8" );
    setlocale( LC_NUMERIC, "en_US.UTF8" );
    setlocale( LC_MONETARY, "en_US.UTF8" );
    ...

There is even a Lua API function[1] that makes this kind of thing easier ...

> Ross.

Philipp

  [1]: http://www.lua.org/manual/5.2/manual.html#luaL_checkoption