Re: Packaging and importing

[PA <petite.abeille@...>]

On Aug 13, 2005, at 17:18, Chris Marrin wrote:

> In other words, does the package get put into the global namespace or 
> not?

It depends.

In theory, they shouldn't. In  practice, any package can stick whatever 
it feels like in _G, itself included. Or highjack _G altogether. To 
complicate matters further more, a package doesn't have to return 
itself either.

For example, most of Luiz packages don't play well with 'require':

local md5 = require( "md5" )

print( type( md5 ), md5 )

> string  md5

Instead of returning itself, the md5 package returns its name.

Diego favors modules which register themselves with _G no matter what. 
But at least they return themselves as well:

local socket = require( "socket" )

print( type( socket ), socket )

> table   table: 0x118480

In other words, anything goes :)

It would be nice though to have a consistent behavior, e.g. 'require' 
always returning a table of functions, instead of the current 
unpredictable situation...

On the other hand, well, it's not such a big issue in practice as you 
are most likely in full control of your environment and can impose 
whatever policy you see fit.

For example, LU never defines anything in _G and always returns its 
functionalities as a table of functions:

-- import dependencies
local LUObject = require( "LUObject" )

-- define the class
local self = LUObject()

...

return self

http://dev.alt.textdrive.com/browser/lu/

Cheers

--
PA, Onnay Equitursay
http://alt.textdrive.com/