> with white-list-of-names do
> ....
> end
> This statement makes all names from the outer scope (with exception of white-listed names) invisible in the inner block.
This might solve the long-standing problem with globals.
To avoid introducing the new keyword, and to make things a little less verbose in typical use cases, we could consider a syntax like
[a. b, c]
that introduces a white list of names, which can appear anywhere a new block (of Lua's grammar) begins, for example:
do [a. b, c]
end
function(x, y, z) [a. b, c]
end
if x < y then [a. b, c]
else [a. b, c]
end
I have chosen square brackets because such a syntax would not be valid in previous versions of Lua, there are certainly other syntactical options to the same effect.
The names thus introduced in the beginning of a block are effective in the entire block, and the effect is otherwise identical with that of Egor's proposal.
Note that every Lua chunk is a block, so [...] in the beginning of a chunk would also work, with the obvious implications on the behaviour of global variables.
Cheers,
V.
