Re: predefined constants

[Adrian Sietsma <adrian_groups@...>]

Thanks Rici & Ashwin

for my first cut, i'll just use string labels; i have already considered 
the "table of functions" approach, but that requires some redesign which 
i wish to avoid at this time; it will probably end up there.
(the app is a state-machine based parser)


>The strings are interned at compile time so the string comparison is 
>just a pointer comparison.

How does that work, if the strings are literals, not LUA vars ?

s = "TAG1"
if s=="TAG1" then ... end
<some code>
if s=="TAG1" then ... end

unless the lua compiler builds a stringtable of literals, it cannot know 
that the three "TAG1" literals are the same, eg have identical pointers.
it's still only has to do a strcmp() or similar, but i can't see a 
straight pointer comparison working with string literals.

Adrian