RE: about the new version

["Vincent Penquerc'h" <vincent@...>]

Roberto wrote:

> We will soon (by Easter?) release a new (alpha) version of Lua.
> The big change is that Lua now is completely reentrant. The state is 
> passed around as an extra parameter, so that there are no global 
> variables 
> in the code. (There is a mechanism with #defines that should ensure that 
> old code compiles without changes.) 

Hmm, sounds good :)

> To make that change, we have to touch the whole code; therefore, we took 
> the opportunity to improve some algorithms, and to remove some "bad" 
> features. In the end, the new version is more than 20% faster 
> than Lua 3.2,
> often much more than that. (E.g., the life program, from Dave Bollinger, 
> runs in less than 50% of the previous time). 

Sounds even better!

[...]

> - there is a new control structure "break", and "repeat" may finish with 
> "end" for infinite loops. For instance 
Isn't the "break" control structure enough, as the repeat is exactly like
a while 1 ?

[...]

> - the hash algorithm for tables was rewritten. The new algorithm 
> is faster 
> than the old one, uses less memory, and is more stable (that is, bad 
> cases are rarer). 

A whole lot of exciting improvements I'm looking forward to :)
Especially this multi-state ability
Thanks a lot for bringing us Lua!

-- 
Vincent Penquerc'h