Re: Learning Lua

[Vaughan McAlley <vaughan@...>]

On 17 September 2010 10:58, Phil Bewig <pbewig@gmail.com> wrote:
> Instead of Project Euler, you might want to look at Programming Praxis,
> which is similar but has more of an emphasis on programming and less of an
> emphasis on math (though there is some math content).
>
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Victor Poughon <victor.poughon@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hello !
>>
>> This is my first post on this list, after lots of reading.
>> So i'm learning Lua. I find it great so far.
>> I'm trying to write code "thinking in Lua" not just "thinking in C, then
>> translating to Lua".
>>
>> So i'm going through Project Euler' problems. I recently solved this one :
>>
>> http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=14
>>
>> Using this code :
>>
>> function mesure(n)
>>   local i = 0
>>   while n ~= 1 do
>>     if n % 2 == 0 then n = n / 2
>>     else n = 3*n + 1 end
>>     i = i + 1
>>   end
>>   return i
>> end
>>
>> local begin = os.time()
>>
>> local max = 0
>> local maxi = 0
>> for i = 1, arg[1] or 10 do
>>   local new = mesure(i)
>>   if new > max then
>>     max = new
>>     maxi = i
>>   end
>> end
>>
>> io.write("Done. ", os.difftime(os.time(), begin), "s.\n")
>> io.write("i = ", maxi)
>> Also on pastebin here : http://pastebin.com/TDPeza7y
>> When running it until 1,000,000 it finishes in about 15 seconds. (I have a
>> 1.83Ghz processor).
>> I'm not really concerned about performance, and i'm sure there's a better
>> algorithm for solving this problem. But an equivalent algorithm in C
>> finishes about 6 times faster.
>> Is this what one should expect from Lua ?
>> I'm also concerned about the style of my code. Is this making a good use
>> of Lua ?
>> I don't get the reflex of using the beautiful things it provides yet, like
>> the generic for, multiple assignments, function as prime values, etc.
>> How do you do that ? :D
>> Victor
>
>

I think code looks pretty much like what I would have written, but I
think Lua is at its best in places where you can use its string
library (especially on binary data), or where a hash table can do some
magic (eg. Mike’s cache). Neither are available (natively) in C, and
both are good for "thinking in Lua".

Vaughan