Re: scope of local outside function

[David Jeske <jeske@...>]

On Thu, Jun 22, 2000 at 03:29:30PM -0300, John Passaniti wrote:
> I'm confused.  What's going on here?  I typed the following into a file and
> ran it with the "lua" command:
> 
>      local x = 42
>      print(x)
> 
> The result was "42" was printed.  Then I tried the same thing interactively
> from the keyboard, and the result this time was nil.
> 
> The Lua documentation states that local variables may be declared anywhere
> inside a block.  Since running the code from a file worked, does that imply
> files have a implicit block around them? 

Yes, a file is a block.

> The second question is what happened to "x" in the interactive case.
> No error was reported by Lua, so I suppose it did what I told it.
> But since the value was nil when I printed it, where did "x" go and
> will whatever memory it allocated be reclaimed?

In the interactive mode, a line is a block. 

Notice that if you want to declare a function in interactive mode, it
has to be all on one line.

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