Lua evolution and C99

[Lorenzo Donati <lorenzodonatibz@...>]

Hi all!

Warning: highly speculative thread ahead! :-)

This thread is a shot in the dark and a sort of informal survey on how 
you all view the possible evolution of Lua.

Lua sticks to ISO C and for very good reasons overall, even if sometimes 
it gives rise to some awkward limitations in some extreme cases (the 
recent discussion on fseek & C. is an example).

This brought my mind into this dark alley of "future forecasts" :-) and 
made me think of a couple of things about the evolution of Lua.

First of all I premise that I'm no C expert, so please be patient with 
me if I say something wrong. :-)

I was wondering whether "porting" Lua to C99, i.e. using C99 features to 
enhance it, would allow some real advantages over C90.

I almost dare to suggest to Lua team, as a sort of proof of concept, to 
consider starting a new line of development (Lua 7.0?) based on C99, 
which could grow in parallel to current production line, but benefit 
from early community feedback (Yes, I know time is a precious resource, 
so it is just a bland suggestion, to see if I tickle something in 
Roberto's and Luiz' brain ;-), since I assume that in a (distant?) 
future where all compilers were C99 compliant Lua would be written 
sticking to C99 (assuming wrong here?), and this Lua 7.0(?) could be 
ready then (wishful thinking?).

Time allowing, I think it would be an interesting "evolutionary" 
experiment to carry on. Of course I'm not in a position to judge whether 
C99 enhancements over C90 are so significant and whether they will open 
up more interesting possibilities. Moreover there is the current 
compilers' C99 compliance to take into account (which, as I read some 
time ago, is still lacking sometimes, notwithstanding the standard is 
more than 10 years old).

Well, I hope I made some of you interested, otherwise sorry for the noise.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for reading.

Cheers.
-- Lorenzo