Re: tables

["D Burgess" <dburgess@...>]

Chris  wrote:
> [...] I probably shouldn't have gotten
> involved in this conversation in the first place.  :)

Lots of passionate responses.
I initially asked a question. Thanks for the replies.
Having reviewed a few historical list mails, I should point out
that one of the reasons for # was to provide a syntactically
cheap way of table (array) appends, the example provided by
Luiz was:

t[#t +1] = newvalue


So that arrays do not have to be reconstructed and so that we
dont have to use (next(t)) == 1 as test for emptiness, it would
be convenient (and consistent) if the # operator provided the
following behaviour (this is the assertion):

"# provides the same number as the number of iterations
provided by ipairs".
e.g.

n=0 ; for i,v in ipairs(t) do n=n+1 end

and

n = #t

"should" provide the same result

which means that

for i,v in ipairs(t) do

and

for i = 1, #t  do

would provide the same number of iterations.

This IMHO would provide an improvement in the behaviour of
the language and a simplification of the doco. I would not be too
fussed if the rule allowed for arrays to be iterated starting at
numbers > 1. This argument is about # and ipairs consistency.

I note with some interest that the deprecated table.foreachi()
provides the consistency that ipairs() does not.

David B.