Re: Propsoal: a lua dialect without nil

[Axel Kittenberger <axkibe@...>]

peter> It would make working with databases harder (NULL == nil) for starters.

I do not work regulary with databases and have zero experience with
databases in lua. But wouldn't be anyway a tad more elegant for a
database API to emulate a first-class nil value as a cell content,
like the NIL = {} idiom commonly seen when people need it as a first
class?

peter> I suspect that the motivation is either religious or academic.

I wonder what religous would mean in these context? But in the sense
of temporaty being detached from having to solve any particular
problem right here, right now (which I would call engineering).
Instead wondering, what would happen if...? what would it mean if... ?
What would be the further conseqeunces? In that regard it is academic.
(Altough I don't see my academic career in informatics).

A few years ago, when someone suggested, "get rid of the null
pointer", I'd say s/he is just crazy. It only recently occured to me,
for a language in which every variable is stored in a hashtable, in
which a key/value can simply be missing, it might be possible to get
away from nulled entries. Well not every variable, there are still
local variables, which would just have to be non-nulled.

dirk> As for the suggestion to design a nil-less language otherwise
dirk> reminiscent of Lua, I have after some reflection thought of something
dirk> non-negative to say about it: it does not comment snidely on the
dirk> political system prevalent in any country.

Haha, thank you dirk, I appreciate your efforts :)

Just wondering, does anyone know of any existing dynamic typed
language, that has no nulled types?