Evaluating files...

[Matthew Percival <matthew@...>]

G'Day,

	I just have a simple little question in regard to lua files.  Is it
possible to evaluate a file before attempting to run it (such as the -c
argument with perl)?  In other words, can I check that it is
syntactically correct in any way other than actual execution of the
code.  As an example of what I am thinking:

if (os.execute("evaluate-lua myfile.lua"))
	dofile("myfile.lua")
else
	io.stdout:write("myfile.lua is invalid")
end

	I know that particular condition would not quite fit what I am
suggesting, but it is just to get the gist of the idea across.

	I am wanting to load lua tables in files, but have been caught out a
couple of times by manually editing those files and missing brackets or
whatnot: when I next execute a script that uses these tables, it will
die on me.  If I could check first and more cleanly handle failure, then
I would definitely take advantage of it.

	-- Matthew