Re: Vararg assignment thread?

[Tim Hill <drtimhill@...>]

On Aug 30, 2014, at 1:08 AM, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The main lesson to be gleaned there is that the yearning to make
> varargs do things they were not designed for, is older than the date
> that most current high-volume contributors to this list started their
> activity. I heartily agree with Mike's implication that anyone
> who posts or comments on any query/suggestion dealing with
> varargs would do well to read that webpage first.
> 

+1 on not changing vararg behavior, I don’t see it making any substantive difference to Lua.

-1 on “read the archives before posting wishes”. Why? Well, though PUC clearly have their own agenda for Lua, isn’t this list at least partly a way to provide feedback on what people would like to see in the language? Part of that must be popularity (note: popular isn’t NECESSARILY good, McDonalds is “popular”). If the procedure was “read archives, if already suggested, do not post” then no idea would ever get more than ONE vote, which distorts the level of interest in things. So yes, before posting search the archives to understand WHY something was not adapted, but then do post if you still feel it is worthwhile imho.

To the OP, as others have noted while it seems an obvious language extension to make “…” read/write, and thus act like a special local variable, the implementation would be expensive since it would involve a bunch of very dubious stack manipulations.

—Tim