Re: modules, require, magic

[Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo <lhf@...>]

> My opinion is that modules are important enough so that there should
> be a "blessed" way of writing modules, and preferrably a somewhat
> obvious one. There has to be a policy.

The recommended way of writing modules is the trivial way: a module should
return a table with its data and functions. It'd be nice if it also did
not pollute the global environment. In Lua, this is done trivially with:

local M={}
M.version="1.0.2"
function M.f() ... end
...
return M

This way works fine for both 5.1 and 5.2

There is no need for a module function and no need for syntax either.
No one needs to know about _ENV for that only for complicated things
like avoiding writing "M." (probably not a good idea as it serves as
documentation of what is exported).

All my C modules follow this (but do create a global as well). Changing
them to 5.2 is really easy, even removing the creation of the global.

I do not see any big deal here.