Re: globals (_locals)

["Russell Y. Webb" <rw20@...>]

Great bit of archeology there.  Interesting to read those again.  As Luiz
implied, Roberto is one of the official Lua authors.

Russ

> From: Eric Tetz <erictetz@yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: lua-l@tecgraf.puc-rio.br
> Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 19:01:17 -0700 (PDT)
> To: Multiple recipients of list <lua-l@tecgraf.puc-rio.br>
> Subject: Re: globals (_locals)
> 
> --- "Russell Y. Webb" <rw20@cornell.edu> wrote:
>> Great that this is being addressed.
> 
> I highly doubt this discussion is going to affect a change in Lua, as much as
> we would like to see
> that happen. As you already know, this issue has come up time and time again
> over the years,
> always sparking a long running discussion before finally trickling off.
> You'll notice there has
> been no 'official' response to the current discussion.
> 
> I think the whole topic was pretty much laid to rest four years ago:
> 
> "...the decision of having globals by default makes sense to us ;-) and we
> don't feel we need to
> change it."
> - Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo, Dec 11 1997
> 
> Here's other mentions of it in the archives...
> 
> "...my basic problem is that default global access easily turns typo-bugs into
> really difficult
> ones (that can be extremely execution order dependant).  Creating and
> accessing globals
> inadvertantly also makes writing a long up-time, multi-user, scriptable
> program almost
> impossible."
> - Russ Webb, Dec 10 1997
> 
> "Except for the requirement for a "local" keyword, Lua look like an ideal
> language for me."
> - Fred Bertsch, Dec 11 1997
> 
> "Lua is great on almost every point, except the scoping rules.  Is there any
> who likes these
> scoping rules?"
> - Freek Brysse, Jun 4 1999
> 
> "How hard would it be to modify Lua source code to add "global" keyword for
> explicit declaration
> of global variables and make all variables local by default?  Current
> implementation of Lua uses
> opposite approach, but that approach is problematic for us because our
> scripters are not
> programmers and it seems there is no force which makes them remember that they
> always have to
> declare their variables as local."
> - Martin Dvorak, Aug 26 2000
> 
> "This is one thing I never understood. Why is it implemented that way - in all
> other programming
> languages (that I know) variables in subroutines/functions are automatically
> local. Is there a
> reason, why it is implemented the other way round?
> - Martin Doering, Aug 28 2000
> 
> "I think this is probably the biggest language design issue with Lua.  I have
> puzzled over bugs
> resulting from this even though I knew about it, and I think it's simply error
> prone.  Otherwise,
> I think the Lua language design is great."
> - Tom, Sep 13 2000
> 
> "I agree strongly with this, and I too feel it's Lua's biggest problem."
> - Reuben Thomas, Sep 13 2000
> 
> "I'm agreed that undeclared variables defaulting to global is *bad*."
> - Nick Trout, Sep 15 2000
> 
> "It's starting to become apparent to me that life would be easier if new
> variables were local by
> default, instead of global."
> - J. Perkins, May 22 2001
> 
> 
> 
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