Re: Setting 'div' tag method on strings

[Renato Cerqueira <rcerq@...>]

Hi James,

Do you think that
  print(sys.servers.time.gettime())
  go(sys.servers); print(time.gettime())
would be very "ugly" in your case?

If you don't think, you can set the gettable tag method to dynamically
handle this kind of thing.
To handle the entries in the root level, I think you can use the
getglobal
tag method.
Using the getglobal tag method, you can also implement something like
a current level, which could be set by your go function.

Regards,
Renato

James Hearn wrote:
> 
> James Hearn wrote:
> >
> > Is it possible to set the 'div' tag method on strings? I'm getting an
> > error saying that it's not :( That makes things more complicated on this
> > end... What *is* it possible to set 'div' for?
> >
> > --James Hearn
> 
> I should probably elaborate. I'm integrating the lua interpreter into
> the 3d engine The Nebula Device. By default it uses Tcl for control. I
> thought it would be cool to use lua instead :) However, I've run into
> some problems.
> 
> The script interpreter (is supposed to) provide a command-shell style
> interface to the engine. I've gotten some pretty decent integration - I
> can execute commands like:
> 
> "go '/sys/servers/time'; print(gettime())"
> or:
> "go '/sys/servers'; print(time.gettime())"
> or:
> "go(sys); go(servers); print(time.gettime())"
> 
> But I can't do things like "print(/sys/servers/time.gettime())", which
> would be ideal for an interactive prompt. I thought I could do some
> hackish things like overload the divide operator to say things like
> print(_/sys/servers/time.gettime()) but it doesn't seem that I can
> overload 'div' for strings. If I make _ one of my userdata values I can
> overload that - I can do "go(_/sys/servers/time); print(gettime())", but
> "print _/sys/servers/time.gettime()" is still out of the question.
> What I have now is nowhere near as nice and clean as the Tcl equivalent.
> 
> Am I just barking up the wrong tree here? Should I pack it up and learn
> Tcl? Should I just accept the clunkiness of how things are now? Should I
> make a 'do' function that does stuff like:
> "do ('/sys/servers/gfx.setclearcolor', 0, .2, .3, 0)" ?
> 
> I was kind of hoping to hide a lot of the string-passing nature of the
> behind-the-scenes stuff here.
> 
> Any advice, suggestions, or comments would be appreciated. I'm just
> about at a loss here. I can post code if you want, but I'm not sure how
> much it would help.
> 
> --James Hearn

-- 
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Renato Cerqueira, Ph.D.             email: rcerq@tecgraf.puc-rio.br
Research Staff Member                      rcerq@cs.uiuc.edu
Tecgraf/PUC-Rio, Brazil             http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/~rcerq

On leave at:
Systems Software Research Group     http://choices.cs.uiuc.edu
Department of Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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