Re: Why does this work? <SOLVED>

["Stuart P. Bentley" <stuart@...>]

?The way I conceptually internalize it is that all functions essentially 
have this signature:

function (...) end

If the declaration has any keywords inside the parentheses (like 
"function(str,last)"), the function works like it starts with this:

local str, last = ...

As such, function calls never care about what arguments a function is 
supposed to take, because arguments are part of the function, not part of 
the call.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Steve Litt
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2011 P9:26 Newsgroups: 
gmane.comp.lang.lua.general
To: Lua mailing list
Subject: Re: Why does this work?

On Friday 04 February 2011 00:04:46 Geoff Leyland wrote:
> On 4/02/2011, at 5:56 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> > Thanks Geoff,
> >
> > I think it does help. So I define my new function print() as taking
> > argument str, so obviously when the program is run str is "Hello World".
> > Then I pass that str to oldprint(), which is a reference to print(),
> > which has already been defined as taking an argument, so no further
> > definition or declaration needed.
> >
> > Does that about sum it up?
>
> Yep.  "oldprint(), which is a reference to *the original* print()"
> If none of these functions were called "print" or anything like it, and
>  there weren't languages where print was part of the language and not just
>  a function, I think it'd all be much simpler to understand.

OK, I think I have it. Thanks.

SteveT


Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt