Moving a lot of data between lua and C

["Dimitris P." <jimmyp@...>]

I was wondering how you guys would handle reading a lot of lua variables 
in your lua code. The situation is this:
I've got a table with a lot of fields of various types(numbers, 
strings,number vectors etc.) and I need to move that to a C struct. 
Doing it with metamethods would be complicated due to the fact that 
these tables are contained in an other table so I pass the whole thing 
to a C function and move it to the C struct from there. That works fine, 
the only problem is the resulting code. I have thought of two alternatives:

1)Using #define macros: This works but you end up with a lot of macros 
and then again some fileds require 'special' treatment, like setting a 
default value to the struct member if the lua field is nil, etc. So this 
isn't the best solution.
2) Straight C code: This works in all cases but you end up with a lot of 
_similar_ chunks of code so this isn't perfect either.

It's not that I can't live with this but I though I'd ask you anyway 
since some of you have a lot of experience with lua so you might know of 
a better way.

Dimitris