Re: metatables for strings?

[Hisham <h@...>]

On 6 May 2015 at 13:13, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo
<lhf@tecgraf.puc-rio.br> wrote:
>> >> PS. I still like syntax "hello":sub(1, 4)
>
>> I always wondered: is there a reason why this syntax is not supported?
>
> Because to allow it in general would require unbounded lookahead.
> Consider for instance:
>         "x".."x".."x".."x".."x".."x".."x".."x".."x".."x".."x":sub(1, 4)

It would? I would assume that : binds tighter than .., as in:

Lua 5.3.0  Copyright (C) 1994-2015 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
> function f(s) return s:upper() end
> f "hello" .. "world"
HELLOworld
>

> The current solution with parentheses solves this and is fully general.
> It's probaly easy to allow just this syntax <string literal> : <function call>,
> but not general enough.

But it is just as general as `f "hello"`, isn't it?

To clarify, I wasn't asking about `:` on arbitrary expressions, only
on string literals.

-- Hisham