Re: lite push in the right direction..

[Choonster TheMage <choonster.2010@...>]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 8:59 PM, Thierry Douez <th.douez@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> some context before my questions..
>
> I started learning Lua 2 years with Pil 5.2 book, and made a plugin for a
> third party (Gui toolbox).
> Did code more or less only one month at this time then have to stop :(
>
> Re-started this old project 2 days ago trying to make it alive and
> re-learned Lua.
>
> Re-discovering what I've done at this time was quite interesting and almost
> all my 3000 lines of C
> was even readable, except few lines (my bad, forgot to put some comments).
>
> So, that said, here is my question:
>
> I have a function:
>
> static int LCvar( lua_State *L )
> {
>     const char *e ;
>     const char *s ;
>     int iRevVal,i ;
>
>    // drop some code; no interest here..
>     s = val.buffer ; // <--  a string:  "1,2,3,4,.."
>     i = 0;
>     while ((e = strchr(s, (int)',')) != NULL ) {
>         lua_pushlstring( L, s, e-s );
>         s = e+1; // skip separator
>         i++;
>     }
>     lua_pushstring( L, s );
>     return ++i ;
> }
>
> in Lua script, I call it this way:
>
> local m,n,o,p =   LCvar("test")  and it works!
>
> Now, i would like to do:
>
> local m,n,o,p =  LCvar[ "test" ]
>
> So, during the init phase of the plugin, I did:
>
> ....
>         lua_newtable(L);
>         lua_setfield(L, 1, "LCvar");
>         lua_newtable(L);
>         lua_pushliteral(L, "__index");
>         // lua_pushcclosure(L, LCvar, 0);
>         lua_pushcfunction( L,  LCvar );
>         lua_pushliteral(L, "__newindex");
>         lua_pushcclosure(L, LCErr, 0);
>         lua_settable(L,-5);
>         lua_settable(L,-3);
>         lua_getglobal(L, "setmetatable");
>         lua_getfield(L, 1, "LCvar");
>         lua_pushvalue(L, 2);
>         lua_call(L,2,0);
> ....
>
> This works if LCvar returns only 1 value, otherwise the local m is nil.
>
> And now, I'm lost; don't know what to do to return a list of values with
> LCvar[ "test" ]
>
> Any pointer or a bit of teaching will be much appreciated.
>
> Regards,
>
> Thierry
>
>
>

This conversation explains a bit about why __index only returns one
value and offers a few alternatives:
http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2007-07/msg00177.html