Re: state of the Lua nation on resource cleanup

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@...>]

> I've got a project where I use pcall often to catch "errors" that are  
> generated with error() when inconsistencies in data being read are  
> found.  I think it's a reasonable use of error/pcall (rather than, say  
> passing back an error code through the chain of data reading functions), 
> but it's not a case where enough has gone wrong that any resources are 
> left hanging, so I don't need or wish for a full garbage collection and 
> finalisation.  I know nothing about the cost of such a collection, so I 
> can't say whether I'd rather not have one.

In most languages, error handling are not supposed to be "fast". (This
means that "error"/"throw" may be slow, not "try"/"pcall"). You shold
not use errors to handle "normal" situations.

-- Roberto