Re: Lua libraries

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <rieru@...>]

On 29 Jan 2002, Victor Bogado da Silva Lins wrote:

> 	I would add that the loadlib should receive a logical name, I mean it
> should be
>
> 	loadlib ("fltk")
>
> 		instead of
>
> 	loadlib ("/xxx/yyy/liblua_fltk.so")
>
> 	The loading mechanism would transate the logical name "fltk" to the
> path of the library needed it could be liblua_fltk.so in a unix
> enviroment or lua_fltk.dll in windows or even something diferent like
> loading a library in a palmos enviroment that does not have files at
> all.

Another approach is to "wrap" C libraries in Lua, and then use the new
"require" function to load them. In your program, you would always write

  require "libname"

without worring whether you are loading a Lua library or a C library.
For C libraries, we would put in the lib directory a Lua file like this:

  loadlib("/xxx/yyy/.../...")

or even

  loadlib("/xxx/yyy/.../...", "initfunc")

To adjust between diferent systems you only need to edit this small file.

Because loadlib is not portable, we should try to keep it as simple as
possible.

-- Roberto