Re: __pairs metamethod - is it in?

[Eric Scouten <scouten@...>]

Asko Kauppi wrote:

> ..following a rather ancient thread on this list..
>
> A quick 'grep' of Lua 5.1w4 sources reveals that the '__pairs' 
> metamethod is not in, at least, not yet.  Has that plan been trashed 
> for some reason, since I feel it would suit pretty nicely in the Lua 
> ideology.
>
> My issue: making a "table emulating" userdata _really_ behave like a 
> table, also when it comes to iteration.  Of course, I could redefine 
> 'pairs'.. hmm.. ;)


Closely related: I just had a problem with ipairs. The table in question 
emulates an indexed array via __index and __newindex calls that get the 
desired data from another location. Unfortunately, the built-in 
implementation of ipairs calls rawget and sees that there's nothing 
there, so no iteration happens.

So my feature request of the day is one of two alternatives:

(1) Rewrite the built-in implementation of ipairs to use get instead of 
rawget.

(2) Add an __ipairs metamethod similar to the __pairs method that's been 
discussed.

-Eric