setmetatable vs setfenv consolidation? (was Re: setmetatable vs debug.setmetatable?)

[PA <petite.abeille@...>]

Hello,

On Aug 03, 2007, at 14:32, Tony Finch wrote:

> See paragraph 5 of section 2.8 of the reference manual. Only tables and
> userdata have per-value metatables. The other metatables are per-type.

Yes, very unfortunate discrepancy...

That said, now that in Lua 5.1 any object can potentially have its very 
own metatable, wouldn't it make some kind of sense to drop getfenv and 
setfenv altogether and extend getmetatable/setmetatable to properly 
handle functions in addition to tables?

After all, a table metatable or a function environment seems to be very 
much alike... any reason(s) not to make them the same?

setmetabletable( aFunction, aMetatable ) = setfenv( aFunction, 
anEnvironment )