Re: Lua Naming Conventions

[Asko Kauppi <askok@...>]

Jérôme VUARAND kirjoitti 27.12.2006 kello 4.35:

> 2006/12/26, Jimmie Houchin <jhouchin@cableone.net>:
> > Language communities often have desired conventions which make things
> > easier for the community. I did a search of the mailing list archives
> > and could not find anything regarding desired naming conventions  
> > if such
> > exists.
> >
> > Are there any such naming conventions or best practices that I as one
> > learning Lua would benefit from following.
>
> I think everything lower case without underscores seems to be the norm
> in small snippets. This is partly because Lua is a weakly typed
> language, variables can hold any type be it numbers, strings objects
> or functions. And Lua being such a high level language, code is
> usually very short and is therefore clear enough without additionnal
> formating.
>
> My 2 cents :-)


I agree with Jimmie,

Lua seems to need less conventions than some more format languages.

One thing I've found useful is commenting the types of parameters in  
a function header, just above the code itself (kind of doxygen-like,  
but informal, take your pick or don't but here goes:)

-----
-- [str][,err_str]= serialize( val [,dump_mode_bool=false] )
--
-- Prepare 'val' into a string presentation that can be unwrapped using
-- m.deserialize().
--
-- val: number/ boolean/ string/ table (including subtables)/ nil
--      function/ userdata (if 'dump_mode'==true)
--
-- dump_mode:
--      allows this function to be used for "dumping" data structures  
(for debugging),
--      without intention to read them back via 'm.deserialize()'.
--
-- _lev: INTERNAL PARAMETER (nil for outside calls)
--      +1, +2, ... for recursive table traversal
--
-- _catch: INTERNAL PARAMETER (nil for outside calls)
--      a table having so far handled tables as its keys (avoids  
traversing cycled tables,
--      or copying shared subtables)
--
-- Note: Metatables of 'val' are ignored (not passed through  
serialization).
--       Table cycles and shared subtables are not allowed (tables  
must be a tree).
--
function m.serialize( v, dump_mode, _lev, _catch )
	..

The use of '_' prefix is there for parameters not used by the API  
(but by recursive calls of the function itself).

-asko