Re: lua function arguments

[David Jeske <jeske@...>]

On Thu, May 14, 1998 at 06:41:49AM -0300, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo wrote:
> >From steve@inquisit.com Thu May 14 02:43:03 1998
> >
> >I may have asked this before, but is there any way to ask Lua for the
> >number of arguments that a given Lua function expects?
> 
> no. the number of arguments that a function expects is not a notion in Lua.
> sorry.
> what do you need this for?
> 
> there are ways to fake this, however.
> you can create a table with the number of args plus the functions itself,
> and use tag methods to aloow the function to be called directly and at the
> same time check the number or do whatever you want to do:
> 
> function f(x,y) ... end
> 
> f={n=2,f=f}
> 
> f(a,b,c) -- this gives an error
> 
> f(a,b) -- this is ok. the tag method uses 'call'.
> 
> something like this.

Too bad there is no "define function" fallback. If there was, and it gave
the argument information, you could do away with the step:

f={n=2,f=f}



-- 
David Jeske (N9LCA) + http://www.chat.net/~jeske/ + jeske@chat.net