Re: Feature request: names for constants

[Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo <lhf@...>]

> local trim_pattern = "^%s*(.*%S)%s*$"

This already does exactly what you want.

The only cost is one local and one instruction, which get executed only once,
unless you have this inside a loop (in which case, you may move it out).

Almost all instructions in the Lua VM accept a register or a constant.
The few that don't but could are:

OP_SETUPVAL
	local x; function f() x=2 end

OP_UNM		
	x=-"2"
	x=-true
OP_BNOT
	x=~"2"
	x=-true
OP_LEN
	x=#2
	x=#"hello"

It appears that none of these are at all common, except perhaps OP_SETUPVAL,
and OP_LEN for string constants.

Bottom line: there isn't a problem that needs to be solved by adding a syntax
for constants. The parser might be smart and use the constant's index instead
of the local's index, but they are both just an array access in the VM.