Re: [ANN] ChunkSpy 0.9.1 -- a Lua 5 binary chunk disassembler

[Kein-Hong Man <mkh@...>]

Hi,

Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo wrote:
> > A detailed assembler-style listing is generated.
>
> Thanks for a nice tool. But, except for merging source code, that's
> essentially what "luac -l" does, right?

More or less, except I wanted to see *all* the details of a binary 
chunk. I found that seeing the entire picture helps a bit more, 
being new to the internals of Lua. I'll probably tweak the code 
disassembly comments to make them a bit more verbose.

> [snip] On the other hand, it's tied to a fixed
> Lua version, because the format of precompiled chunks usually change with each
> new version.

Can't be helped; it is meant to process binary chunks, after all. 
Anyway, I guess differentiating between versions is what the 
version byte in binary chunks is for, so it's a matter of support.

> I think we're lacking an assembler, at least for the sake of completeness.

I've heard of a Lua assembler called luas from searching the mail 
archives, and I've looked at Zed Shaw's notes, but the luas 
author's site seems to be missing and I couldn't find anything 
relevant anywhere.

> [snip] a module for luac that reads luac listings and builds
> functions from those. A kind of raw assembler. I'm not sure though how useful
> that would be, except for the fun of poking into precompiled chunks.

I guess these are more or less educational tools. I have also just 
added an interactive mode to my disassembler script, for 
exploration and for instant feedback on very short snippets.

--
Cheers,
Kein-Hong Man (esq.)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia