Re: help with lua style and syntax

["David Collier" <myshkin@...>]

> *From:* "Joshua Phillips" <jp.sittingduck@gmail.com>
> *To:* "Lua mailing list" <lua-l@lists.lua.org>
> *Date:* Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:45:14 +0100
> 

...
> No it isn't.

well I'm finding myself writing:

    do
	    local localRs485SerialInstanceOpened
	    localRs485SerialInstanceOpened,  localRs485SerialInstance  
            = openSerialInstance(localRs485DeviceName)
	    if not localRs485SerialInstanceOpened
	    then
	        print("program exiting - can't open local RS485 serial port "
                   ..localRs485DeviceName)
	        return
	    end    
    end

when I could write

    if( not( opened, localRs485SerialInstance =
                 openSerialInstance(localRs485DeviceName))
    then
        print("program exiting - can't open local RS485 serial port 
               "..localRs485DeviceName)
	        return
    end
    
I think the 2nd is more elegant.





> 
> > Now Lua allows me to return more than one value, so I can write
> > 
> >   passed, z = myFunction(x, y)
> >   
> > but is there any way in Lua I can write
> > 
> >   if passed, z = myFunction(x, y)
> >   
> > and set both passed and z, but then test 'passed' ??
> 
> No, thankfully.
> 
> > It would allow me to do:
> > 
> >   if     ( passed, z = myFunction(x, y) )
> >      and ( passed, q = mySecondFunction(z) )
> >      and ( passed, result = myThirdFunction(q) )
> > 
> > which is a lot more comapct than what I'm writing at present.
> 
> Compact, maybe. It's much better to make software easy to read, and 
> that
> doesn't necessarily mean making it compact.
> 
> See also: Perl golf.
> 
>