It was thus said that the Great Petite Abeille once stated:
On May 19, 2010, at 8:59 AM, David Kastrup wrote:
If both do exactly the same, the logical thing to keep would be ipairs,
not the numeric loop. Simplifies the language.
FWIW, I would second that. Drop the numeric loop. And keep ipairs
alongside the generic for statement.
Also, while we are at it, drop the while and repeat statement as well. How
many loopy [sic] constructs does a language need?
They're there for convenience. Technically, all you need is a conditional
and a way of diverting flow control---basically, if and goto---and from
there you can build up all looping constructs:
for i = 1 , 100 do i = 1
... X:
end ...
i = i + 1
if i<= 100 then goto X end
----------------------------------------------
while morwork do X:
... if not morework then goto Y end
end ...
goto X
Y:
-------------------------------------------------
if foo then do if not foo then goto X end
... ...
end X:
----------------------------------------------------
if foo then do if not foo then goto X end
... ...
else goto Y
... X:
end ...
Y:
----------------------------------------------------
repeat X:
... ...
until done if not done then goto X end
and so on. Even C has the little used do while() construct. The "loopy"
constructs are there as a means to express intent. I hope from the example
above that using "if ... goto" hides the intent and makes it harder to
reason about the code.
-spc (Just be thankful we don't have Common Lisp's LOOP or even
INTERCAL's COMEFROM ... )
