Re: state of the Lua nation on resource cleanup

[Sam Roberts <vieuxtech@...>]

On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 2:02 PM, Farmbuyer <farmbuyer@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Sam Roberts <vieuxtech@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 6:18 AM, Roberto Ierusalimschy
>> <roberto@inf.puc-rio.br> wrote:
>> Would it be easier for people to implement finalization if tables
>> supported the __gc metamethod?
>>
>> I'm thinking I could do something like:
>>
>> function f()
>>  local io
>>  local _ = setmetatable({}, {
>>          __gc = function() io:close() end
>>  })
>>  io = io.open()
>>  ...
>>  return
>> end
>
> It seems vaguely like misuse of tables; nothing's being stored,

Hm, well, lua uses  tables for pretty much everything ;-)

> nothing's being hashed, a table is being created when all we really
> need is the metamethod.  (I realize it's just an example.)  I think
> I'd prefer using newproxy.

True, except newproxy() is undocumented, and described by the authors as a hack.

As far as I can tell, newproxy() exists as a work-around because
tables don't have __gc.

Sam