Re: Undefined variables returning nil

[Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@...>]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:57 AM, William Sumner
> Perhaps I'm incorrect about target demographics. In the past, it's been publicly stated that Lua is intended for "non-professional programmers". I take this to mean hobbyists and newcomers, particularly end-users exposed to a scripting API or configuration format in an application. I've never gotten the impression that Lua is intended to be a C-like Wild West that punishes heavily for mistakes. For the most part, it's simple and easy to learn, which might be why I consider the lack of error-reporting for undefined variable accesses out-of-place in such a friendly language.
>
> Preston

I've learned one lesson on this list, the hard way that people in the
Lua community focus on embedding it (I probably think as you do).

So I'm someone with a big C library and an application. I want to use
Lua and find it really useful for many purposes:

* I program parts of my application in it, and I want it to be fast.
* I use it as a configuration file format and don't want it to look
*too much* like a program
* I want my users to script in it.

In two of those use cases, especially as a configuration file, I
probably want nil to be as it is.

In the last one, I may use one of the "strict" libraries, which gives
the user exactly what you expect.

So, the embedder plays a role in the language's design by not
including some standard libraries or demanding others or instituting
strict or...

That's really a big part of Lua and why "mechanisms, not policy"
reigns so supreme and this is one of the primary examples of it.

Okay. Sorry for the noise.

-Andrew