Re: String represents arrays of characters.

[Javier Guerra Giraldez <javier@...>]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 3:44 PM, Dirk Laurie <dpl@sun.ac.za> wrote:
> In some previous threads, various ways to achieve this in Lua were
> suggested.  I was flamed for "writing a dialect" and failing to
> think in Lua instead of Pascal..

i don't think it's the most "unlua" suggestion heard on this list.
and definitely it's common to suggest even far-fetched things in this
list.  personally, i find the (recurrent) 'short lambda' suggestions
far uglier, even if well intentioned.


of course, you're free to write whatever you want in your source; but
if you add such utils just for a 'nicer' syntax, you'll soon find:

- you might try to use it when it's not defined (for example, when
discussing code online, or when proposing changes to an open source
project)

- if you accept contributions, they won't use your 'enhanced' syntax

- after a while, you might adapt to the 'inferior' default syntax and
lose interest in your utils.  this happens all the time when learning
a new environment.


in the end, it's usually not a good idea.  many of us have already
learned that the (not so) hard way.

(PS: to answer PA, that would break current  (''):find() usage )

-- 
Javier