for _, record in ipairs (database) do
local name, email, address in record -- attributes
process (name, email, address)
end -- for
Just for the record -- I did eventually figure out how to put together a complete implementation of the extended table unpack syntax that Gavin proposed a couple years ago:
So, for example, in my own parser, this works:
for _, record in ipairs (database) do
process(name, email, address in record)
end
"record" can be replaced by any arbitrary _expression_, meaning that one can write things like:
process(name, email, address in parse_record(line) )
After living with the patch for a few months though -- I'm not yet convinced it's worth the complication. As Gavin says -- the form that one almost always ends up using is just the standard transformation:
local a, b, c in t
Still, if anyone wants the more general patch, let me know, and I'll post a diff.
-Sven
