Re: Oh, well, looks like atoms are not possible

[Rici Lake <lua@...>]

On 17-May-05, at 11:44 AM, Chris Marrin wrote:

> What a pain.
>
> I did a test to see if I could get strings to behave like atoms. I 
> tried a short, 3 char string and a long, 35 char string. From the code 
> it looks like strings above and below 32 chars are handled 
> differently. I assume that is what everyone here has been talking 
> about when saying "short strings".

No, we were discussing a possible improvement (or not) to Lua.

The difference between strings <= 32 and > 32 only has to do with 
hashing, not the string address.

> I did 3 tests. I loaded the strings, got back their char* pointers, 
> then  put them into the registry and popped them. Then I forced a GC 
> and loaded the strings in the registry onto the stack and checked 
> their addresses. They matched. Then I loaded those same strings again 
> with new pushstring() calls, and they matched. Then I executed these 
> two functions, in turn:
>
> function _getabc()
>     return "abc"
> end
> function _getlongString()
>     return "AVeryVeryVeryVeryVeryVeryLongString"
> end
>
> Looking at the returned string values, the first one matched and the 
> second one didn't.

As far as I know, that can only mean that either the long string got 
gc'd somewhere along the way, or that you mistyped it in the 
_getlongString function.