Re: [ANN] Lua 5.2.0 (beta-rc1) now available

[Xavier Wang <weasley.wx@...>]

2011/6/14 Lorenzo Donati <lorenzodonatibz@interfree.it>

On 14/06/2011 5.41, Xavier Wang wrote:

And you will find in Lua 5.2 beta, the meaning of # operator is changed.

Really? I thought only the description in the manual was changed, supposedly to be clearer.

Or do you mean the fact that now # respect the __len metamethod?

Am I missing something?

in beta:

The length of a table t is only defined if the table is a sequence, that is, all its numeric keys comprise the set {1..n} for some integer n. In that case, n is its length. Note that a table like

in 5.1.4:

The length of a table t is defined to be any integer index n such that t[n] is not nil and t[n+1] is nil; moreover, if t[1] is nil, n can be zero. For a regular array, with non-nil values from 1 to a given n, its length is exactly that n, the index of its last value. If the array has "holes" (that is, nil values between other non-nil values), then #t can be any of the indices that directly precedes a nil value (that is, it may consider any such nil value as the end of the array).

it means: this table:

local t = {1, 2, nil, 4}

in lua5.1.4, #t will be 2 or 4, but in lua5.2, #t is undefined.