Re: Lua design : why no lists ?

[Asko Kauppi <asko.kauppi@...>]

15.9.2004 kello 11:22, Philippe Fremy kirjoitti:

>  First, I would not make a distinction between tuple and lists. Both
> represents the same thing.

To me:

- Lua tables are table by reference
- Tuples are table by value (no such thing currently in Lua)

> As far as I know, it is not possible to know from a function return 
> value
> how many values where just returned. You can pack them and unpack them 
> but
> it is not possible to know in advance how many of them are there. In my
> opinion, the return value of a function in lua is a kind of hidden 
> list.

You're right.  However, this seems to be changing with the exploratory 
'...' operator in Lua 5.1.  Sort of tuple, I guess.

You can do even now:

	local tbl= { function(whatever) }
	print table.getn(tbl)

-ak