Re: [ANN] Lua 5.2.0 (work3) now available

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 9:39 AM, Philippe Lhoste <PhiLho@gmx.net> wrote:
> In JavaFX, for example, we have to write:
>
>  for (i in [ 1 .. 100]) println("...");
>
> ie. we have to generate a sequence (kind of array) filled with increasing
> numbers from 1 to 100 to iterate on it. I suppose the compiler optimizes
> that, ie. that the sequence is virtual, not taking up memory.

Yes, exactly what the 'for l in range(0,10): ' does in Python - they
have xrange() that gives an iterator.  Personally, I can't understand
why people don't like the numeric-for.  It's fast and expresses a
common pattern in a well-understood fashion.

But then I don't understand why ipairs has to go either - not much
code involved.  Again, it is a well-understood pattern that we all
know, why throw it away?   Alexander says that it it is significantly
slower than numeric-for, but this is only the kind of thing you will
notice with trivial loop payloads.  So the definition of 'significant'
is in question here.

steve d.