Lua vs. multi-threads / events driven based application / async operation

[Ziv Barber <zivbarber@...>]

Hi,

First, I have to say that Lua is a great scripting language, easy to add to any program, compiled on many compilers, not need additional libraries - which is great for many project - thanks!

Now, for my problems with Lua:

I added Lua few months ago to a Windows based GUI application and I found some limitations with Lua:

1. I didn't find out how to stop a script from running from another thread.
2. I didn't find out how to give a pointer to Lua when registering a new function so when this function will be called it'll get it.

For example:

lua_State *myLua;
MyClass myClass;

...

lua_pushcclosure ( myLua, MyClass::MyFuncCode, 0 );
lua_setglobal ( myLua, "my_func" );

MyClass::MyFuncCode is static but I want also to have the "this" pointer to myClass when MyClass::MyFuncCode is executed.

3. Somehow registering the IO functions always failed:

// This code always fail:
luaopen_io ( myLua );
lua_settop ( myLua, 0 );

// This code fail too:
luaopen_loadlib ( myLua );
lua_settop ( myLua, 0 );

LUA_API void lua_replace (lua_State *L, int idx) {
  StkId o;
  lua_lock(L);
  /* explicit test for incompatible code */
  if (idx == LUA_ENVIRONINDEX && L->ci == L->base_ci)
    luaG_runerror(L, "no calling environment");   <---- ***************************** it crash here
  api_checknelems(L, 1);
  o = index2adr(L, idx);
  api_checkvalidindex(L, o);
  if (idx == LUA_ENVIRONINDEX) {
    Closure *func = curr_func(L);
    api_check(L, ttistable(L->top - 1));
    func->c.env = hvalue(L->top - 1);
    luaC_barrier(L, func, L->top - 1);
  }
  else {
    setobj(L, o, L->top - 1);
    if (idx < LUA_GLOBALSINDEX)  /* function upvalue? */
      luaC_barrier(L, curr_func(L), L->top - 1);
  }
  L->top--;
  lua_unlock(L);
}

What's the meaning of "no calling environment"?

thanks!