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

[Jerome Vuarand <jerome.vuarand@...>]

2011/6/15 Scott Morgan <blumf@blueyonder.co.uk>:
> On 06/15/2011 09:08 AM, Joseph Manning wrote:
>>
>> On 2011-Jun-15 (Wed) at 09:43 (+0200), Marc Balmer wrote:
>>
>>>> Am 15.06.2011 um 09:31 schrieb Joseph Manning:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Alexandre Erwin Ittner
>>>>>>> <alexandre@ittner.com.br>  wrote:
>>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> A "label" keyword would be great too
>>>>>
>>>>> +1
>>>>
>>>> -1
>>>>
>>>> We are the retail business and on cash register you have to print
>>>> labels all the time.  So the word 'label' by nature occurs quite
>>>> often in our software.  We would be not-so-amused if that became
>>>> a keyword...
>>>>
>>>> Marc Balmer
>>
>> The whole point here is to use a keyword.  That keyword does not need
>> to be the actual word "label".
>>
>> Alternatives include
>>    "spot", "point", "place", "target", "location", "destination", ...
>>
>> No doubt any choice could cause breakage for *some* existing programs,
>> but it's a matter of the best *overall* way forward for Lua users.
>
> -1
>
> "label" is very likely to have a pre-existing use in the application domain
> as would "point" (totally unacceptable, just about all 2D gfx and GUI APIs
> would be affected), "place", "target", "location" and "destination" (at the
> very least, anything that handled deliveries or other real-world location
> data)
>
> If we must have a keyword instead of punctuation, how about something
> slightly awkward like "jumppoint" which is both clear in it's meaning (one
> of the other problems with "label" is it's a bit generic) and unlikely to be
> in use.

Should we forever have to use an awkward keyword (think about all the
time wasted explaining it to newcomers) to avoid a one time search and
replace for some people? Any keyword can be problematic to some of us,
I've had to use start/end_ countless times instead of start/end, and
even after years of Lua programming I often realize "end" is reserved
only when the compiler tells me so (or when I notice the different
color in my editor). It's not like we're forced to use all lower case
names that could one day become keywords, we can be future-proof
simply by using capitalized variables names.