Re: What's up with token filters (Re: New operators?)

["Andy Stark" <AStark@...>]

Lua list <lua@bazar2.conectiva.com.br> writes:

>Suggested C token filter approach would still be an important step
>further from the current patching model. Patching is stabbing the
>patient, making surgery. C token filters is like giving eye glasses to
>him. And the patient can wear multiple eye glasses if needed... ;) 
> (stopping the analogy before it hits a wall)

>Meaning: extendability and layerness in the lexer is a good thing,
>whether made in C or in Lua.  This seems like Lua 6.x to me... 8)

It's a bit like the way you can currently customise the numerics. Lua
comes with floating-point numerics by default but all numeric code and
data types are carefully wrapped in macros and routines. It is
consequently easy (relatively) to change the numerics to integer or
something more exotic. However, you can't do it in Lua, you have to use C.

We tend to talk of metamechanisms in the Lua language itself, but things
like this are also metamechanisms in a sense: they don't do the work for
you but they make it reliable and comfortable. There are a number of
things in the implementation, docs and culture that follow this
philosophy, so perhaps we should have a name for them too (but *please*
don't call them "meta-metamechanisms" ;-)

&.



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