lua-5.1-alpha: length operator on tables (arrays) and nil values

[Michael Roth <mroth@...>]

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Hello list,

I have a question regarding the  new length operator.
The documentation of 5.1-alpha says:

    The length of a table t is defined to be any integer
    index n such that t[n] is not nil and t[n+1] is nil;
    moreover, if t[1] is nil, n may be zero.

    [...]

    If the array has "holes" (that is, nil values between
    other non-nil values), then #t may be any of the indices
    that precede a nil value [...]

This is a problem, because it could result to weird results:

    t = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 }
    t[5] = nil
    t[8] = nil

    #t  ---> 7

But:

    t = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 }
    t[4] = nil
    t[8] = nil

    #t  ---> 3

And, more weird:

    t = {}
    t[1] = 1
    t[4] = 4

    #t  ---> 1

    t[2] = nil
    t[3] = nil

    #t  ---> 4

So the problem arise, in 5.1-alpha there isn't a way to get the index of
the largest non nil value in an array. Even lua_objlen() doesn't help.

This will result in some more headache in vararg functions called with
nil arguments...

So, my question is: How to deal with this situation? How to use arrays
containing holes? How to handle nil arguments in vararg functions?

To me it looks like that in 5.1-alpha arrays are simple not able to
handle nil values. What's the rational behind this decision?


cu

Michael
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