Re: Lua 5.1 (work6) now available

[Chris Marrin <chris@...>]

Gavin Wraith wrote:

> In message <d010fc8a05051907081d63f5a6@mail.gmail.com> you wrote:
>
>
> > I for one think the length operator is a good thing.
> > The frequency of use justifies the syntactic simplification.
>
>
> I agree, and my vote would be for # rather than *. There is an
> aesthetic rationale for my choice. # looks like two overlaid +
> signs and length is additive. * makes me think of multiplication,
> not appropriate at all.

I am a newbie here, so forgive my impertinence. But lua has typically 
chosen keywords for readability (do end vs do { }). I have used lots of 
programming languages, but I have never used one where a length operator 
was done with a symbolic primitive. Doesn't "t:len()" or even 
table.len(t) seem like better syntax? And what does this primitive 
return anyway, the real length of the table or what luaL_getn() returns?

--
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