Re: +=

["Nick Trout" <nick@...>]

I agree. Lua has design goals which everyone seems happy with. Forks of the
language will not stick to these principles and will dilute development. The
developer base is small enough. An advantage of this is its very focussed,
but progress can be slow. I guess I've seen all these discussions on
comp.lang.python dozens of times and ultimately people become convinced,
conform or move on (and not many move on, I'll wager). Be grateful that the
developers of this language are strong willed!! :-) Python hasnt suffered
from Guido (the author) being stubborn and single minded. Do you want a Perl
type scenario?

You have Sol as a "research fork". Mess around with this and if you can come
up with a valid argument for changing the language semantics then maybe it
will happen. But then there will be related issues and the change will not
be as simple as it seems and essentially you've already got another
language. Sol is not Lua.

Most of the discussion about changing Lua seems to be to do with programming
style or aesthetics which to me seems a pretty weak argument for altering a
language. If you dont like the language, use another one! There are hundreds
of languages out there and you will have to adopt a different implementation
approach to get the best from each of them. There is usually a mechanism in
Lua for doing what you want, its just a question of finding the best method.
The metaprogramming aspects of Lua do take a bit of getting your head round.


----- Original Message -----
From: Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo
>What about resurrecting the yacc-based parser, adapting it to the new
>syntax, and including it in Lua-4.1, even if the default would be to
>not even compile it? Then it would be easier for users to experiment
>with changes on the syntax...

I thought about this. It would be convenient for people wishing to extend
Lua's syntax to make sure they would not be breaking anything. but we
most certainly do not want to encourage people to create Lua derivatives,
and still want to call it Lua. So, the yacc file is not going to happen
(plus it'd be a lot of work.)
--lhf