Re: string.explode

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

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 9:36 AM, Dirk Laurie <dpl@sun.ac.za> wrote:
> Should not the criteria for admitting a new routine to the standard
> library be:
> (a) you can't do it purely in Lua, or
> (b1) you can, but it is inefficient, and
> (b2) the task is a very common one.

I'd be interested to know if we have a b1 case here, but commonness
isn't so important in the design of the string library, like
table.copy() would be used often, but it's easy and efficient enough
to do in Lua.

It would be nice (but would probably never happen) if the Lua
distribution had a few little Useful Utility modules bundled with it,
in the same vein as the solitary exception, strict.lua.  If (for
instance) there was a simple straightforward class module then people
would have used it before rolling their own incompatible ones, and OOP
would not be such an awkward thing. Amazing difference what a hundred
lines of 'endorsed' code can make.

steve d.