Re: Multiple returns & list constructors

[David Given <dg@...>]

Asko Kauppi wrote:
> I've done it in Hamster (the Lua-based build tool) using tables.  So 
> each entry can be a number, string, or table (recursively).  Only the 
> _last_ user (the one actually reading the table) needs to 'unwrap' it, 
> for which purpose I use:

Alas, I'm already using tables to represent a particular data value, so 
I can't really overload them like that!

What my program is is a makefile generator. You specify a target and a 
list of source files like this:

app { "one.c", "two.c", "three.c" }

You can specify global options:

app { optimisation=0, "one.c", "two.c", "three.c" }

*And* you can specify local options:

app { optimisation=3, "one.c", {optimisation=0, "two.c"}, "three.c" }

This all works fine.

What I want to do is to be able to use app {} as part of the description 
of another target, say module {}. So I can do:

module {
	app { ... },
	app { ... }
}

But each app {} can build multiple files, and each of those files has to 
find its way into module {}'s argument list...

The only thing I can think of is to have a magic keyword that only 
exists in the return value of app {} that signifies to module {} that 
that table should be implicitly flattened, but that's horrible. I'd much 
rather find a cleaner solution.

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