Re: The purpose of LUA_ENVIRONINDEX pseudo index

[Luis Carvalho <carvalho@...>]

> Wow!!!, thank you for the explanation now I have a new understanding  
> about lua stack and its environments. Definitely the purpose of  
> pseudo-indices is not very clear in the manual. I thought that  
> objects at pseudo-indices were special objects that can be accessed  
> but can not be changed because they are not really in the current  
> stack. I was completely wrong.

You misinterpreted it. The manual is actually clear, although terse:

"Pseudo-indices are used to access the thread environment, the function
environment, the registry, and the upvalues of a C function."

That's their purpose. :) Moreover,

"Unless otherwise noted, any function that accepts valid indices can also be
called with pseudo-indices(...)"

and so lua_replace is valid for pseudo-indices, while lua_remove is not.

> That means , for example,  a function can change the global thread  
> environment or even the registry with lua_replace(L,  
> LUA_GLOBALSINDEX, ) or lua_replace(L, LUA_REGISTRYINDEX, ) , isn't  
> it? Now I think about it, it  seems quite reasonable.

Yes, that's right.

Cheers,
Luis.

-- 
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
        -- P. Erdos 

-- 
Luis Carvalho
Applied Math PhD Student - Brown University
PGP Key: E820854A <carvalho@dam.brown.edu>