Re: lists with nil play nice for Lua 5.2

["Aaron Brown" <arundelo@...>]

John Belmonte wrote:

> 1)  no hook for length operator (#) on table or string
>
> This is a wart in Lua's extensibility, and often results
> in complex and inefficient workarounds.

And Asko Kauppi wrote (elsewhere in the thread):

> Now IF we only can get the '__len' metamethod to be
> applied to tables (as it should, in my opinion...).

Maybe having __len be consulted for tables is a good
solution to the problem of sparse tables, but the fact that
it isn't is consistent with the behavior of other
metamethods; e.g., __add isn't consulted for numbers.  To
quote myself (page 268 of Beginning Lua Programming):

> Metamethods serve mainly to define new behavior, not to
> redefine existing behavior. Even the exceptions to that
> rule are limited, which is why __eq only works with tables
> or full userdatas, and why __newindex and __index only
> work with nonexistent keys.

Lua team: what is the downside to making newproxy()
official?

--
Aaron
http://arundelo.com/

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