Re: Redefining locals

[David Given <dg@...>]

On Thursday 11 November 2004 21:22, Matt Hellige wrote:
[...]
> I think it would be nice for lua to adopt a similar policy for locals,
> as has been suggested by others. I'd like:
>
>     local x = 3
>     function f() print(x) end
>     f()
>     local x = 5
>     f()
>
> to print '3, 5' instead of '3, 3'...

This strikes me as being counterintuitive. I expect the explicit use of local 
to define a *new* variable. f() is defined using the old version of x as an 
upvalue, so defining a new one would simply hide the old one from any further 
code.

I don't know Scheme, but I do know ML, and I'd expect local to work like 'let 
<var> = <value> in...' (except with mutable variables, of course).

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