RE: Functions prototypes and real #defines

[Quinn Tyler Jackson <quinn-j@...>]

 > By the way, is there some way of creating "real
> > #defines" in Lua?
>
> You don't need to. Because Lua strings are pooled, the equality
> test is just a
> pointer comparison, so the following is a perfectly efficient way to do
> things:
>
>     if enemy.type == "ENEMY1" then ... end
>
> Or if there are lots of choices:
>
>     local switch = { ENEMY1 = function() ... end, ENEMY2 = ... }
>     switch[enemy.type]()

The above use of tables with functions to emulate switches caught my eye, so
I tried it with a long if ... elseif ... end chain (well, 8 choices ... not
so long, and I used a global rather than local table for the choices), and
it turned out to profile exactly the same speed as the if ... elseif .. end
chain. (The local table version was about 1 ms. slower for my test.)

The unexpected side effect was that the profiler code I'd written didn't
seem to get called back on the switch[s]() call, and so the timings/hit
counts for the functions in the table disappeared.

I shall never cease to be amazed by the versatility of Lua.

--
Quinn