Re: Proposal: allow @, $, !, and ? in Lua identifiers

[Paige DePol <lual@...>]

On Apr 26, 2014, at 4:19 PM, Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@trms.com> wrote:

>> On Saturday, April 26, 2014, Paige DePol <lual@serfnet.org> wrote:
>>> On Apr 26, 2014, at 6:44 AM, David Demelier <demelier.david@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> > 2014-04-25 14:57 GMT+02:00 steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com>:
>>> >> On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 2:54 PM, Coroutines <coroutines@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>> How is <> used in Pascal?
>>> >>
>>> >> It is "not equal".
>>> >>
>>> >>> Also, I would like to see ~= changed to !=.
>>> >>
>>> >> Apparently ~ is a bitch to type on some keyboards, so allowing it as
>>> >> an alternative might be an idea (Moonscript does this [1])
>>> >>
>>> >
>>> > I also would like to have != instead of ~=. For many reasons, first
>>> > because ~= usually mean "approximatively" and because almost all
>>> > popular languages use !=. A beginner programmer will confuse when he
>>> > will first see ~=. I don't think there are real reasons to keep this
>>> > operator :-).
>> 
>> For Lunia (my custom build of Lua for my game engine) this was literally the first patch I created! ;)
>> 
>> I thought using ~= was a strange choice for not equals, as the tilde, to me, also makes me think "approximate", not "not equal".
>> 
>> What was the rational behind using ~= instead of != for Lua?
>> 
>> ~pmd~
> 
>  http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2013-02/msg00197.html
> 
> Amongst others...

Interesting post, however, it does not really address why the architects of Lua chose ~= over != or <> for their "not equals" operator.

Also, as that post did talk about patches adding bugs, all patches I am creating for Lunia are also patching the Lua test suite to include the new changes, which has helped considerably with ensuring the patches are as robust and bug-free as possible! :)

~pmd~