How to do actual recursive functions in Lua?

[David Kastrup <dak@...>]

Ok, call me stupid, but a recursive function in my book would be one
that can call itself and is self-contained.

If I do something like

function fact(n)
  if n>1 then
    return n*fact(n-1)
  end
  return 1
end

then this is _not_ a self-contained recursive function, since it relies
on calling itself through the variable named fact.  If I do

factx=fact
fact=nil
print(factx(6))

this does not work.  We had some previous discussion about recursive
stuff here (with some fairly esoteric code partly), but what would most
likely be the _simplest_ way to get a self-contained recursive function?

-- 
David Kastrup