Re: Lua 5.1 (work1) now available

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@...>]

About the work1 version:

- the garbage collector now has a "generational" phase. Based on
how much it collected in the previous cycle, it does either a full
incremental collection or simply a generational collection (that is,
collect only objects created after the previous cycle).

- the GC also has a different way to keep its pace. We hope this will
avoid too many cycles (but it may result in using too much memory).

- the new vararg system is implemented. To keep compatibility, all
vararg functions still have an "arg" variable. If the function uses
the "..." expression, then it does not fill the "arg" variable.
Otherwise, the "arg" variable gets a table with the vararg parameters,
as before.

- getn uses a new algorithm to compute the size of an array
(I almost forgot about this...)

- the "require" does not create a _REQUIREDNAME global variable.
Instead, it passes the required name as an argument to the main
chunk of the package. It also has some other small changes; we
will discuss this later (in a few days).

- there are several other small changes that (we hope) should not
affect programs. But we may be wrong...

-- Roberto