Re: use of invalid L in libevent wrapper from Lua Programming Gems

[Wim Couwenberg <wim.couwenberg@...>]

> The wrapper in gem 27 doesn't use L as passed to priv.dispatch(),
> instead it uses some previously-valid L.

You are right.  That code implicitly assumes that all events are
created on the state L that calls Event.dispatch() later on.  The
cause is this line in the handler function in C-Event.c:

     lua_getfield(ev->L, LUA_ENVIRONINDEX, "handle_event");

Here it is assumed that the Lua call frame of the dispatch function
uses ev->L.  Another approach could be to store the aux table in the
registry instead of making it the environment of all (private) C
calls.  See these lines in the initialize function in C-Event.c:

     /* set the "aux" table as environment */
     lua_pushvalue(L, 1);
     lua_replace(L, LUA_ENVIRONINDEX);

There is another typo in the code in the book.  In Event.lua the line

        usec = (timeout % 1)*1e9

should be

        usec = (timeout % 1)*1e6

Thanks for your feedback.

Bye,
Wim