Re: Making Lua lexically scoped (was: Re: Proper tail recursion)

[David Jeske <jeske@...>]

On Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 02:07:54PM +0100, Reuben Thomas wrote:
> Hear hear. IMO lexical scoping would have a greater immediate
> beneficial effect, as it both simplifies the language for newbies
> and makes encapsulation easier for experts. 

I appreciate any effort to make Lua simpler and more
functional. However, I want to point out a few things.

First, this mailing list is composed of language nuts who are
embeddeding lua, so I'm sure most of us are familiar with scoping
styles and recursion. However, from what I know the primary "newbie"
of Lua is NOT a user on this list. Lua is a simple embedded scripting
and configuration language, thus most "newbies" who write Lua code (by
configuring or extending something which has Lua embedded) really
don't know what lexical scoping is, and would struggle to make a
recursive function which terminated.

Second, most of us on this mailing list used lua for a year or two
before it even had upvalues and found it quite useful. In the current
project I have Lua embedded in I only use upvalues for subtle
performance reasons, and don't need full lexical scoping. 

I would be far happier if I had a mechanism for making my class system
have more bearable syntax. However, I recognize the likely-hood of Lua
ending up with the meta-syntax mechanisms that I think would go so
well with it's meta-language mechanisms is about zero. :)

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