Re: Features you would like to see

[Rob Kendrick <lua-l@...>]

Patrick Donnelly wrote:
> I'd like to see some sort of "default" value for function arguments
> added. Something along the lines of:
>
> function foo(a or 5)
>   ...
> end;

I'm not sure it's worth complicating the compiler for this, given you
can do a = a or 5.

I suspect this could be done reasonably easily using token filters.
Perhaps Daniel or Asko will curry one up for us.

> What features would you like to see added?

There isn't a lot that I want that can't be emulated in another way.
For example, something I find quite useful is array slicing:

 a = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }
 two, three, four = a[2..4]

But this can easily be done with a simple function, such as this naive
example:

 function slice(t, s, e)
   local r = {}
   for i = s, e do
	r[#r+1] = t[i]
   end
   return unpack(r)
 end

 two, three, four = slice(a, 2, 4)

Or perhaps even:

 a.slice = slice
 two, three, four = a:slice(2, 4)

B.