Re: Request for 5.4: adding [] as table creation syntax for Lua 6.0

[Michael Nelson <mikestar1313@...>]

For me, this thread is just making tables too complicated. For tables I 
create in code, problems with nil easy to program around. For table 
operations on arbitrary data:

local fakenil=(}

function  nilin(val)

    if val==nil then val=fakenil end

    return val

end

function nilout(val)
    if val==fakenil then val=nil end
    return val
end

Use these functions in conjunction with table.insert ...., and # works 
fine on tables with with no holes. If you really need sparse arrays, it 
would be more complicated--but I have no need. Perhaps someone could 
make a sparse array library using userdata? I would use that if I needed 
it. Who has any problem using lfs if they need file operations more 
complex than the io library provides? But lfs is not part of the Lua 
core, nor is it a standard library. The same could happen with a well 
written sparse array library. They only thing I might like to see 
changed in the table library is to make table.pack and table.unpack 
symmetric, as has been discussed upthread.

-- Mike