Re: Lua 5.1 (work6) now available

[Chris Marrin <chris@...>]

Adriano Ferreira wrote:
> Each one of these operators or prefixes (* or #) has its load of
> meanings in another programming languages. It is difficult to chose
> which one makes more sense in the context of Lua.
>
> For example,
> * (C/C++) 
>     - dereferencing pointers in expressions 
>     - declaring pointer types in declarations
> * (Ruby, Python, Perl6)
>     - syntactic sugar for what Lua unpack does: f(*p) = f(p[0], p[1], ...)
>       In Perl 6 known as the splat operator
> # (Smalltalk)
>     - used as a prefix for Symbols (which are Smalltalk parlance for
> Lisp/Scheme atoms)

But why have a primitive operator for this at all? It seems like having 
a library function call to return this information would be sufficient. 
In fact, Lua has such a thing, or more precisely it has two, right? One 
to return the number of contiguous numeric indices and one to return the 
total number of properties. So why the operator? I think adding modulus 
'%' is a good idea because this is such a fundamental operator. But if 
you want to add new operators, then the bitwise operators or '+=', etc. 
would seem like a better choice, wouldn't it?

--
chris marrin                ,""$,
cmarrin@arch.sel.sony.com b`    $                             ,,.
(408) 955-3049          mP     b'                            , 1$'
Sony    ,.`           ,b`    ,`                              :$$'
     ,|`             mP    ,`                                       ,mm
   ,b"              b"   ,`            ,mm      m$$    ,m         ,`P$$
  m$`             ,b`  .` ,mm        ,'|$P   ,|"1$`  ,b$P       ,`  :$1
 b$`             ,$: :,`` |$$      ,`   $$` ,|` ,$$,,`"$$     .`    :$|
b$|            _m$`,:`    :$1   ,`     ,$Pm|`    `    :$$,..;"'     |$:
P$b,      _;b$$b$1"       |$$ ,`      ,$$"             ``'          $$
 ```"```'"    `"`         `""`        ""`                          ,P`
"As a general rule,don't solve puzzles that open portals to Hell"'