Re: Down with Upvalues

["Russell Y. Webb" <rw20@...>]

As I understand it, the issue is what are the ideal or desired scoping rules
for Lua?  It seems that there is a lot of debate about terminology, but
little disagreement about what would be ideal.

I have yet to see a coherent argument stating that upvalues are anything
other than a compromise or claiming that they are fun or even clear.  Every
one seems to agree that in an ideal world the compiler would do the obvious
scoping based on the source and not the runtime state --- that fits with how
globals work today and extending an accepted idea seems clear.

So a more uniform scoping rule that is an extension of the rules for globals
today seems to the on the wish list for Lua.  It's up to the Lua authors to
consider what to do with the language and up to us to help by making
implementation suggestions (or even complete implementations) if it's
important.

What is really under debate?  Hopefully not vocabulary...

Perhaps I've missed a serious issue about the future possibilities of the
language to debate.  If so, it may help lots of people on the list to
clarify what that issue is.

In any case, it would be useful to know if basically we all agree on what
would be ideal aside from how it could be accomplished or what compromises
it entails. 

Russ