Binary format of dumped code

[Tim Gogolin <tgogolin@...>]

Well, I didn't get a reply to my post (Tue, Aug 10) about the 
occasional lack of HOOKLINE calls when I would have expected them, but 
I wanted folks to know that I've worked around that by using HOOKCOUNT 
(count == 1), and looking at the currently executing activation 
record's current line number... When that changes, then I must have 
moved to a new line. Not elegant and certainly not speedy, but that is 
not so important when debugging.

I have a different question if someone knows where to point me...

I've seen various references to desires for a lua-lint like behavior, 
but the closest to an actual implementation I've found is Jay Carlson's 
post (March 15, 2004) which contains a URL to a lualint executable.

If I wanted to write my own (or adapt other's efforts), I'd clearly 
need an understanding of the lua byte code dumped format. I generally 
understand the big ideas (i.e. GETGLOBAL, SETGLOBAL opcodes, etc), but 
the integer parameters refer to a table of strings somewhere else in 
the blob, and I don't know where they might be.

THE QUESTIONS:
1) Is there documentation on the lua 5 dump format? So far, the lua 
distribution source code itself (ldump.c, lundump.c, lopcodes.h, lvm.c) 
are all I've found.  Has anyone written a paper (with diagrams?) 
explaining the binary format of dumped code?  If I have to trace 
through ldump myself to get this understanding, would such a paper be 
useful to others?

2) Has anyone written lualint like functionality where source code is 
available?

--
Tim Gogolin