Re: file:read("*n") reference manual entry improvement

[Lorenzo Donati <lorenzodonatibz@...>]

On 25/10/2013 10.28, Roberto Ierusalimschy wrote:
>> Mmmh, I did some investigations and I'm not completely sure it is a bug,
>> although the C89 standard is *really* murky on the subject. According to
>> the standard (a draft document I found long ago on the Internet whose
>> number is not specified, I hope you have a copy of the actual C89
>> standard to check my references):
> 
> I have a copy of C99...
> 
> Anyway, it seems we both agree the C documentation is quite convoluted
> about this topic.  So, the question remains whether it is worth trying
> to explain something similar in the Lua manual, versus leaving it open
> to the user's imagination or own tests...
> 
Good question. Of course I'm against adding too much clutter or an
extensive explanation. After all the behavior is not directly related to
Lua implementation, and the explanation cannot be clear anyway because
of the murkiness of C standard about it.

However completely ignoring the issue is bad IMHO. A (good) one-liner at
least *hinting* at the problem should be added for the benefit of
newbies or casual users. It is true that by googling around it won't be
that hard to find the relevant information, but I fear that it could be
perceived as a sort of Lua bug by people with no C knowledge (or no much
time to delve into the issue).

So it is also sort of a "marketing" problem, especially with the metric
ton of WoW scripters out there with almost no clue of C or what Lua
scope really is.


-- Lorenzo

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