Compile checked string constants

[Domingo Alvarez Duarte <mingodad@...>]

Hello !

I'm the author of https://github.com/mingodad/SquiLu a scripting 
language that reuses several things from Lua and seeing several 
discussion towards Lua 5.4 release I thought that would be nice to add 
some kind of "compiler checked strings constants".

What does I mean by "compiler checked strings constants" ?

One common mistake/error in scripting languages is the use of literal 
strings as key for hash tables and the compiler can't do anything to 
help us prevent spell errors, sometimes at runtime it'll be catched but 
not always, and it's a hard to find error.

Ruby has an ID type ":somename", in SquiLu I implemented "const 
:somename;" as a shortcut for 'const somename = "somename";' but still 
the compiler can not check it all the time, I was thinking to use some 
prefix for names that I want the compiler to check, could be something 
like "if($somename == somevariable)" like perl/php but only for compiled 
checked string constants.

I want to find an elegant syntax way to express this, does someone have 
any idea or example for it ?

Why not add something like this to Lua 5.4 ?

Cheers !

example:

const :passwrod;

...

if(db_field.password == query_string_table[$password]) return true;