Self-awareness of functions?

[Dirk Laurie <dpl@...>]

In Lua you must take care if you want to define a global recursive 
function.  Thus:

do  local fact
    fact = function(x) if x<2 then return 1 else return x*fact(x-1) end end
    fac = fact
    end
fact = "Napoleon escaped from Elba."
print(fac(5)) --> 120

You can't omit any of that padding: create a local variable, then 
assign it to a global variable, all in an enclosing block.

Because of the need for a local name for the function, you can't define
an anonymous recursive function, e.g. for use in an argument list.  

A standard name like "self" which makes the function aware of itself,
would be useful:

function(x) if x<2 then return 1 else return x*self(x-1) end end

Trouble is, I can't see a way to write a C function "self" that 
can be imported into the global namespace and would achieve this.
"self" would have to be an implicitly defined local variable 
referring to the function under construction, created by the Lua 
compiler: in effect, a reserved word.  

But wait!  I'm willing to live with reserving the word "self".

Define once:

function recursive(def)
    local self
[[ return the result of all sorts of clever stuff involving 
    string.gsub() and loadin() ]]
    end

and then the anonymous function can be created by

recursive"(x) if x<2 then return 1 else return x*self(x-1) end"

But I've discovered that I am not clever enough to write that stuff :-(

Dirk