Why not Just PHP-stupid include?

["Patrick Mc(avery" <patrick@...>]

I'm apologizing in advance for the first negative toned email I have 
sent to this list.

I really respect Luiz and Roberto and there have been a lot of helpful 
people on this list but Lua's glow is dimming for me. It's tiresome 
watching this endless battle between Lua titans over module while 
lua-peasants like me seem to be without basic tools.

I've been on the list for about 2 years, read PIL cover-to-cover >5X 
times bought all the other Lua books yet I had to ask another list 
member how to include code without module or dofile. I think every 
newcomer to the language would expect this to work:

(file oneVar.lua)
local x = 1

(file simpleTest.lua)
print("starting")
dofile("oneVar.lua")
print(x)
print("the end")

Yet the results are:

(results)
starting
nil
the end

I don't want to have to pack x into a table and return it, on the other 
end I don't want to have to define a new local variable to receive the 
payload from require. PHP is a poorly constructed language but include 
just switches execution from one file to the other and then goes back to 
the first, it's dead simple to pick this up. Please consider the little 
people down here that don't have code that will be published-Patrick