RE: Explicit declaration of variables

["Tom Miles" <Tom@...>]

Thanks for the pointers to strict.lua.  I'm working on integrating that
at the moment.   I'm just working through a few hiccups whereby strict
lua causes lua_getglobal to barf on missing globals, rather than
returning nil (I guess I can't have my cake and eat it) :)  

I'm not sure how it will interfere with my sandboxes either...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: lua-bounces@bazar2.conectiva.com.br 
> [mailto:lua-bounces@bazar2.conectiva.com.br] On Behalf Of Thomas Lauer
> Sent: 17 September 2007 11:22
> To: Lua list
> Subject: Re: Explicit declaration of variables
> 
> "Tom Miles" <Tom@creative-assembly.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > I'm not going to ask why variables don't need to explicitly 
> declared 
> > as I have learnt my lesson from my last post, but having spent yet 
> > another hour or so tracking down a bug due to a typo causing a 
> > variable to be automotically created and assigned a nil value,
> 
> Well, if it helps you... that was my first stumbling block as 
> well and it's still my #1 gripe about Lua.
> 
> I have since tried various avenues to have the compiler 
> complain about undeclared globals but it turned out that this 
> is a knottier problem than it appears. A fully-fledged 
> compile-time implementation (as opposed to runtime checks, 
> see below) is not trivial. At the very least it would 
> significantly complicate the compiler implementation (which 
> is currently a model of clarity and efficiency). I decided 
> that the benefits wouldn't outweigh the effort.
> 
> > I was wondering if
> > anyone had written a patch to stop this behaviour?
> 
> Not a patch as such but there's a file in the Lua distribution (see
> etc/strict.lua) that somewhat alleviates the situation by 
> doing runtime checks. This works well and it's not as 
> inefficient as it sounds. (FWIW, I've done a module on the 
> basis of this that supports modules as well, see 
> http://thomaslauer.com/comp/LuaStrict .)
> 
> --
> cheers  thomasl
> 
> web : http://thomaslauer.com/start
> 
 








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