Re: Propsoal: a lua dialect without nil

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

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 12:20 PM, Axel Kittenberger <axkibe@gmail.com> wrote:
> To sum it up:
> pro: less confusion about nil as "second class value" (regardless if
> that idiom exists)
> pro: one primitive type and keyword less in a minimalistic language.
> pro: errors (from typos or otherwise) are raised much closer to where
> they happened than the nil value causing hickups later.

I tend to like 'errors thrown early' but there are ways and means of
doing this already.

I don't doubt that such a dialect could be crafted, but it would not
really be Lua anymore. The default-arg specifier seems particularly
un-Lua-like, reminding me more of C++.  I know there are arguments for
'non-nullable types' but we are mostly used to the fact that an object
reference can be nil. Otherwise, there has to be another distinct
placeholder.

I am not yet persuaded that there is a serious problem that needs such
drastic surgery. Maybe just homoepathy?

steve d.