Hi, Roberto,
I was thinking, is it really worth the hassle to keep Lua compatible
with C89 nowadays? Shouldn't it be moved to C99, whose features
would help make the code clearer and more maintainable? After all we
are talking about a 30+ years old standard that was the first
attempt at standardization of C.
The fact that C89 is rather flawed (from a modern language POV) is
evident (IMO) from how many improvements C99 introduced, many of
which are given for granted in modern languages and systems. Just to
name a few off the top of my head: long long int type with
guaranteed minimum 64bit width, fixed width integer types, variable
declarations at the point of usage, line comments, boolean types,
IEEE754 support, type-generic macros, inline functions, complex
numbers (BTW, I would welcome native complex numbers support in
Lua). Even later C standards didn't introduce so many and deep
innovations as those introduced in the leap from C89 to C99, if my
memory serves me correctly.
I have a feeling that nowadays no one creates compilers that are
just C89 compatible any longer, even for exotic new systems (e.g.
newer low-cost MCU families) that require a quick and dirty compiler
put together in a hurry. C99 seems to the baseline even for the
simplest and dumbest C compiler out there. Is it really worthwhile
to keep developing Lua using a C89 programming style?
Just my two cents.
Cheers!
-- Lorenzo
On 14/11/2022 17:45, Roberto Ierusalimschy wrote:
I noticed that Lua code sometimes uses macros where a static
inline function
would appear to work equally as well.
[...]
How interested would the Lua development team be in replacing such
macros with
functions in the future?
Inline functions is not present in C89, and Lua is (still) compatible
with C89.
-- Roberto
