RE: [ANNOUNCE] Lua 3.0 -- an extensible extension language

[Bret Mogilefsky <mogul@...>]

I don't have much to offer in return, but I'm very interested in seeing
how you implemented the require/provide module interface!  Could you
possibly send it to me?

Thanks in advance...

Bret

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Stephan Herrmann [SMTP:sh@prosun.first.gmd.de]
> Sent:	Friday, July 18, 1997 1:32 PM
> To:	Bret Mogilefsky
> Subject:	Re: [ANNOUNCE] Lua 3.0 -- an extensible extension
> language
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Congratulations, after Lua 3.0 has been out for about two weeks, let
> me
> say, it really is a neat tool! The addition of tag methods feels very
> nice. Especially when integrating different kinds of userdata, but
> also 
> for tables with different semantics it is a great advantage to be
> able, 
> to define access to each kind really independently from any other. 
> (Special thanks to Roberto :-)
> 
> How does tklua blend into this picture? (Hi Waldemar :-) Has anybody
> experience on how it works in Lua 3.0 (of course it is compatible with
> 
> Lua 2.5, but I'm not sure if the integration of tklua-Lua2.5 was not a
> bit to 
> tight for this version shift??). Just asking, before I will invest
> effort on 
> my own part. I figure, tklua is also a _very_ _good_ candidate for
> using tag 
> methods. A matter of effort, I guess? What are the current plans?
> 
> The next question, I would like to raise, concerns some kind of
> contributions
> shelf. There is a lot of things, that probably several people have
> already
> solved seperately. More common solutions are still to come. Little
> things,
> I would like to share, range from a "require"/"provide" style of
> module concept over an elaborated OO-implementation upto ??? Is it
> worth
> putting up a contrib directory on the ftp-servers, both for lua-code
> as well
> as for C-modules, that integrate additional functionality into the
> interpreter?
> 
> Next my very technical question: is it possible/desirable to include
> "==" into the set of events that can be bound to tag methods at least
> for
> userdata? I have a library, which return different handles for the
> same object,
> everytime asked. It is of course only a slight matter of syntax,
> whether I
> still can write ref1 == ref2 to mean the obvious or whether I need to
> go through the "gettable" tagmethod and bind a function to
> ref1:eq(ref2).
> 
> I'm extremely pleased to be able to bind "gc" differently for every
> tag.
> Especially userdata, that refer to all kinds of "external" resources,
> need this heavily. I was just wondering (no definitiv need yet, just
> curious),
> whether the garbage collector can be triggered explicitely, when
> resource go
> down. I forgot the calling scheme.
> 
> Ah, and now my question about the luac/dump/undump technology: is it 
> possible (how??), to dump at runtime a single function as byte-code
> into
> a -say- database, and during a later session retrieve this function
> and
> install it via dostring()? I wouldn't be afraid to go through the
> C-API.
> Looking (superficially) at some luac -u output, I got the impression,
> that
> lua bytecode is modular in that it doesn't contain references accross
> functions, is this right? 
> 
> That's all for today. I will keep trying Lua by all means! Until now
> it
> didn't break :-)
> 
> Stephan
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> 			  Stephan Herrmann
> 			  ----------------
> 	GMD-FIRST				   TU-Berlin
>  Gesellschaft f. Mathematik			 FB Informatik
>    u. Datenverarbeitung				Softwaretechnik 
>      sh@first.gmd.de			    stephan@cs.tu-berlin.de
>   Phone: ++49 30 6392 1870
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----