Lua Questions and Thoughts

[Ken Rawlings <krawling@...>]

Hi,

   Just wondering, what is the current status of Unicode strings with Lua?
   I know it was being considered at one point last year, but haven't seen
   much talk about it in a while.

   Regarding the BCD/Double/Int issue that comes up occasionally, perhaps
   an optional Lua type system much like those implemented in some Lisp
   compilers could help out -- numbers could default to being double's
   unless specifically specified as integers. It seems like this could
   probably be done without breaking existing code while providing a great
   deal of benifit.

   I agree in principal with the idea of keeping the core language as
   small as possible, however I can see where people are coming from as
   far as wanting things like a case statement. Perhaps we could look into
   developing a macro system(ala Scheme hygenic macros) for Lua that would
   be powerful enough to do transformations like this while keeping the 
   core Lua small.

   Finally, how do people do error handling with complicated applications
   in Lua? Correct me if i'm wrong, but error() stops the interpreter,
   which is often not what you want. Is there a way to implement some sort
   of simplified exception handling, perhaps with tag methods?

Thanks,
_Ken Rawlings

> On Sat 18 Mar, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo wrote:
> We, the Lua team, have periodic meetings in which we mostly discuss what
> to *remove* from Lua (without breaking anything) rather than what to add!
> --lhf