Re: Improvements for creating DSL with Lua

[Alexander Gladysh <agladysh@...>]

> Since its origin, Lua is well suited for data oriented DSL.
> But for declarative DSL, the mandatory use of parenthesis for arguments function
> (except in case of a single string or table) is a big limitation.

> As example, consider the 2 following versions of the same code
> (which come from my current work on <http://github.com/fperrad/lua-Coat/>
> and it is not really a DSL
> and David Manura already send me some good suggestions in pure Lua)
>        -- "classic" Lua
>        class 'Point'
>
>        has( 'x', { is = 'rw', isa = 'number', default = 0 } )
>        has( 'y', { is = 'rw', isa = 'number', default = 0 } )

I usually use this idiom in my DSLs:

has "x" { is = 'rw', isa = 'number', default = 0 }

has = function(name)
  return function(data)
    return has_impl(name, data)
  end
end

Also, if you have an urge to patch Lua syntax, take look at Metalua:
http://metalua.luaforge.net.

HTH,
Alexander.