Automating local optimization (Re: Is "scripting" truly Lua's future?)

[Asko Kauppi <askok@...>]

Actually, a syntax modifier could easily automatically make all your  
"usual globals" declared as locals.

It could even change references to string.* etc. to be locals.   
Without you needing to do this explicitly.

	print( string.find )

-->

	local print= print		-- prefix code automatically added to each chunk
	local string= string
	...
	local string_find= string.find
	...

	print( string_find )		-- modified of the actual source above

Would you rather have it this way?

-asko


David Given kirjoitti 15.9.2008 kello 19:04:

> Tony Finch wrote:
> > On Fri, 12 Sep 2008, David Given wrote:
> > > - Lua doesn't have a preprocessor. My app was made up of multiple  
> > > source
> > > files, and most of the time I wanted the same common header at the  
> > > top
> > > of each source file (importing C functions, mostly). Many's the  
> > > time I
> > > wished for #include.
> >
> > It's a dynamic language, so you achieve something like that by  
> > calling a
> > global function which sets up the namespace at run time.
>
> Yes, except that these are all local variables, which means they're
> lexical and don't exist in a namespace.
>
> All my Lua files tend to start with the same boilerplate containing
> lists of:
>
> local string_find = string.find
> local table_insert = table.insert
> local print = print
>
> ...etc. It would be really nice to be able to common this somehow.
>
> --
> David Given
> dg@cowlark.com