Re: The meaning of 'sugar' [Forked from Re: Why do we have ipairs?]

[Thomas Jericke <tjericke@...>]

On 06/13/2014 09:07 AM, Ross Bencina wrote:
> On 13/06/2014 4:13 PM, Thomas Jericke wrote:
> > > I'll leave it to others to determine whether using string literals in
> > > an interface is ever good style.
> > >
> > > Ross.
> > Show me a Lua API that doesn't use string literals.
> >
> > local myLib = require "MyLib" -- Oops a string literal
> > myLib.myFunction()
> > -- which is syntactic sugar for:
> > myLib["myFunction"]() -- Oops, another one.
> >
> > So without sting literals, you cannot use globals, require, access table
> > elements of type string.
>
> You're intentionally twisting my words.
No that is not my intention. I honestly that Lua builds heavily on 
string literals.
> It's one thing to be able to use a string literal, quite enough to 
> require its use in an interface.
But Lua does require to use strings literals almost everyone. In my 
example I even forgot one string literal:
require "MyLib" -- is syntactic sugar for
_ENV["require"]("MyLib")
> We're not talking about module or function names here, we're talking 
> about constants that are usually integers.
>
> Ross.
I don't know how you store integer "constants" in Lua but I store them 
in a global or a table element.

SomeContants = {
    constant1 = 42,
    constant2 = 1773
}

And then I use it:
Any.Function("hello", SomeConstants.constant1)

And the same could be used in a case statement:

switch SomeInteger
  case SomeConstants.constant1
    print "SomeInteger was 41"
  case SomeConstants.constant2
end

But of course there is a catch. The switch case table would have to be 
built up every time
because, SomeConstants is not really constant. So I agree, this is not 
suitable.

So I see your problem with the problem if you want to switch for a 
number, but I don't
see a problem with string literals in a Lua interface. Actually as long 
as I stay in the Lua
worlds I prefer string literals over numbers as long as the number is 
only used as an enumeration.

--
Thomas