Re: Ref manual; lua_State documentation

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@...>]

> The reference manual (5.2) says this;
> 
> > typedef struct lua_State lua_State;
> >
> > An opaque structure that keeps the whole state of 
> > a Lua interpreter. The Lua library is fully 
> > reentrant: it has no global variables. All 
> > information about a state is kept in this structure.
> >
> > A pointer to this state must be passed as the first 
> > argument to every function in the library, except to 
> > lua_newstate, which creates a Lua state from scratch.
> 
> And at thread creation it says;
> > lua_newthread
> > lua_State *lua_newthread (lua_State *L);
> >
> > Creates a new thread, pushes it on the stack, and 
> > returns a pointer to a lua_State that represents this 
> > new thread. The new thread returned by this function 
> > shares with the original thread its global environment, 
> > but has an independent execution stack.
> >
> > There is no explicit function to close or to destroy a 
> > thread. Threads are subject to garbage collection, like 
> > any Lua object.
> 
> Seems conflicting to me, as the newthread only creates a thread, but still
> returns a lua_State. Is then the lua_State description outdated?

lua_State points to threads and threads point to the global state, so
a lua_State indirectly points to the global state. We will try to
clarify that in the manual.


> Also pops the question what happens when you call lua_close() with a
> lua_State created by lua_newthread().

It closes the state associated with that thread.

-- Roberto