Re: Suggestion for 5.3: import() for creating a "slew" of locals

[Gavin Wraith <gavin@...>]

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In message
<CAFBuAbcimXeaznYXPar_ONKqRruWsXczqxcm-=3VAg_cXB8+UA@mail.gmail.com> you wrote:

> I don't know if the application would be considered wide enough but:
>
> local * = t.a, t.b, t.c

I have used a restricted form of Peter Shook's patch for RiscLua for
many years now, so I can write

 local a, b, c in t

and I find it an invaluable and intelligible shortcut.

> I'd only say that the crazy amount of "a, b, c = a, b, c" is rather hard to
> explain as a "sweet feature of Lua"

In RiscLua I would use

   local a, b, c in _ENV

The code for Peter Shook's patch is much simplified by the restriction
to local statements. In fact I cannot see the point of having anything
more general. It is particularly useful for code that is doing things
with lists of labelled records; stuff like

   for _, record in ipairs (database) do
      local name, email, address in record -- attributes
      process (name, email, address)
   end -- for

becomes a standard trope.

-- 
Gavin Wraith (gavin@wra1th.plus.com)
Home page: http://www.wra1th.plus.com/