Re: Reducing memory consumption

[Rici Lake <lua@...>]

On 31-Aug-04, at 4:34 PM, Nick Trout wrote:

> I think this involves some static analysis of the script during
> compilation in order to import the script closure so we can call it.

Not really. A simple regex scan would do. It doesn't matter if you get
false hits, because any unused closures will be garbage collected. The
only problem would be if the regex found so many false hits that it
inserted more than the permitted number of locals into the prelude.

> Again, we need the script closures. The method I was suggesting 
> involves
> one function closure (for the dispatch) and then a function name to
> number substitution in a pre-processing phase (either lexical, regex or
> processing Luac -l output).

It's true, you end up with closures. But they're not that big, really.
And you only end up with closures for the functions you're actually
referencing.

> The only other way I could come up with of doing this without the
> function name for index argument substitution is to have the dispatch
> function return a closure which would then be invoked, calling the
> function we want. A C or Lua function could be returned. Returning a 
> Lua
> function would create garbage (eek) and using a C function would mean 2
> function calls for every Lua call (inefficient).

Creating a C closure also creates garbage, unless I'm misunderstanding
you.