Re: Seeking opinions about a use case of using Lua as a data description language

[Sean Conner <sean@...>]

It was thus said that the Great Hakki Dogusan once stated:
> Hi,
> 
> For a production system, I'm using Lua table for stock definitions.
> 
> Each table consists of something like:
> --
> local T = {
>   some fields..,
>   colors = { some fields.., prices = {}, }
> }
> return T
> --
> 
> I've created one file for each T.
> There are ~9000 files.
> During a production session, each process will be use
> 200-300 of them (may not be same set).
> 
> I'm seeking your opinions about usage:
> - Load all at startup, put them in "Defs" table

  Even if you have tons of memory, I would not load all during startup
unless loading during operation takes too long for what you are doing
(masure measure measure).

> - Load only when needed (ie.let OS handle caching)

  I would go with this.  Modern Unix systems tend to use any free memory as
a file cache anyway.

> - Load when needed and store in "Defs" table

  Again, this depends upon your useage.  If a data file is loaded more than
once, then this is a good thing to do; otherwise, if it's only used once, it
may just waste some memory.  This depends upon your usage of the data.

  -spc