Re: bit.lshift and performance - luabitop v.s. lua-5.2.0-work4

[Bogdan Marinescu <bogdan.marinescu@...>]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 3:40 PM, Enrico Colombini <erix@erix.it> wrote:
> On 13/10/2010 14.12, KHMan wrote:
>>
>> Anyway most app developers do not need to code DCTs and FFTs nowadays.
>
> Mostly true, but last time I worked in game development I also wrote tools.
> I used Lua whenever possible to save time and effort, but even for simple
> image file manipulation I often had to resort to C/C++.
> I remember having to write horrible Lua bit ops workarounds just to be able
> to make small changes to data files.

I can understand this all too well. Bit operations in Lua are a real
PITA for anything that's not trivial, and I felt that a lot in eLua.
On embedded systems, doing bit operations is many times a necessity,
especially when writing low-level code that "talks" directly to the
hardware (and having to manipulate lots of registers at bit level in
the process). I'm seriously considering adding one of the bitwise
operators patch from the Lua power patches page to fix this, even at
the price of loosing full compatibility with standard Lua.

Best,
Bogdan