Re: Suggestion: Deprecate "Attempt to index a nil value" error; instead, return nil or create table

[Egor Skriptunoff <egor.skriptunoff@...>]

On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 9:26 PM connor horman wrote:

I’ve used some strongly typed languages that have a “try operator”.

t?[a]?[b]?[c]?[d]?[e] would be equivalent to t[a][b][c][d][e], but if any evaluation preceded by a ? has a false value (false or nil), the result of the entire _expression_ is that value (short circuiting). This only short circuits out of chains of index expressions (of all forms), and function calls.

What about adding "try-version" of every Lua operator?
   t?[index]   = indexing: return nothing if t is nil
   t?.field    = indexing: return nothing if t is nil
   t?:method() = invoking a method, return nothing if t is nil
   func?(arg1,arg2,..) = calling a function: return all the arguments if func is nil
   a ?+ b = adding: (a or 0)+(b or 0)
     ?- a = negating: -(a or 0)
   a ?~ b = XORing: (a or 0)~(b or 0)
   a ?& b = ANDing: (a or -1)&(b or -1)
   a ?* b = multiplying: (a or 1)*(b or 1)
   a ?/ b = dividing: (a or 0)/(b or 1)
   a ?% b = taking modulo: (a or 0)%(b or infinity)
   a ?^ b = raising to power: (a or 0)^(b or 1)
   a ?< b = comparing: nil is replaced with the minimal possible value of the datatype
   a ?== b = comparing: nil is replaced with 0 or empty string depending on the datatype
   a ?.. b = concatenating: (a or '')..(b or '')
      ?# a = taking length: return 0 if a is nil