A Lua to JavaScript translator

["Phil Deets" <pjdeets2@...>]

Hello, I have been thinking about writing a Lua to JavaScript translator.  
The main use case would simply be to provide an alternative language for  
the web. You would just have to run the translator before you use the  
script.

This would be different than the lua2js which already exists on LuaForge  
since I would want to make it work in all cases with the only restrictions  
being on what modules can be used. I think lua2js only does a superficial  
translation. For example, I don't think it handles using functions as an  
index into a table.

I do not have a goal of making the output readable. In fact I might  
purposely obfuscate the output to hinder reverse-engineering efforts of  
the translated code.

The approach that seems the easiest to me is to run the Lua source through  
luac.exe and use the output of luac as the input of the translator. This  
way I don't have to worry about lexing or parsing. I also could have a  
smaller range of inputs to worry about; there would only be the 38 types  
of instructions to translate. The down-side to this approach is that the  
format of the luac output could change significantly between versions.

Now for my questions:
Is this already being work on?
Can you think of any major problems that would prevent the approach  
described in the previous paragraph from working?
Can you think of a better approach?

Thanks,
Phil

P.S. I couldn't find a search feature for the mailing list archive; so  
sorry if this has already been discussed.