Re: help with lua style and syntax

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

> *From:* "Hisham" <h@hisham.hm>
> *To:* "Lua mailing list" <lua-l@lists.lua.org>
> *Date:* Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:32:22 -0300
> 
> On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 11:26 AM, Martijn van Buul
> <martijn.van.buul@ellips.nl> wrote:
> > On 10/18/2012 3:43 PM, David Collier wrote:
> >
> >> 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.
> >>
> >
> > I feel like your examples are contrived.
> 
> It is contrived. The first one even uses longer variable names.
> 
> And, also, the fact he's prefixing a lot of variables with
> "localRs485" means he should probably be reorganizing the namespace,
> by using modules, functions or simply restricting scope -- but 
> really,
> if one is using a local variable in a 10-line "do" block to store a
> boolean result to openSerialInstance, does the variable need to be
> called "localRs485SerialInstanceOpened"? I think "opened" is
> understandable enough given the context! (Actually, if it was my 
> code
> I would have used "ok" for this purpose.)
> 
> -- Hisham

excuse me , but why are you criticising my programming style when all I
was asking for is an answer to a technical question.

I write long variable names because they please me. Others don't like it.
I find it hard to care.

Rename them x, y and z for all I care, my original question is the same
:-)

Essentially I have come to like the ability of a C assignment to be used
as a value - and if Lua could handle it, including multiple-value
assignments - which are a great feature of Lua, some of my code would
look a lot neater :-)