Re: Inline Functions

[Björn De Meyer <bjorn.demeyer@...>]

Peter Hill wrote:
> 
> Good point.
> 
> However it's really more of an indulgent exploration than a suggestion for a
> final implementation. I hope writing it will give me a better feel for some
> of the problems faced implementing the language, and a better understanding
> of the internals. For example, writing the lexical analyser has already
> showed me a few lexical ambiguities in the current documentation.

Well, you're free to indulge in such an exploration, but 
getting to know the C code of Lua seems to me the best way of 
getting to know the true internals of Lua. 

 
> And VB is an environment where I can quickly whip up & debug a simulation.
> The lexical analyser only took about 2 hours to write. I expect the parser
> to take about 4.

If you like quick programming, hµthen why not use the ideal
language for that: Lua. Have you considered writing the Lua 
lexer and parser in Lua? I have a  half-finished Lua lexer 
written in Lua lying around, based on the C version. I wrote it 
as a fluke of interest, so I'll probably not finish it anytime soon, but
if you could continue the project, then that would be nice. Not to 
mention that the Lua authors also have expressed interest in Lua in Lua. 
It might help their approval of your sugestions... I'm
willing to help you a little with Lua in Lua...

> That is the ultimate goal, I agree. I'd prefer a compiled DLL or OCX .
> However I've never tried creating any COM compliant DLL's, so I'm sort of
> puting it off. :-O

Well, I have done this before, and basically, you need to write 
a good IDL file. Howerver, I must also admit that it's quite 
painful and arduous to do so. Activex is IMO not much fun.
Maybe you could do a .NET component in stead?


> It was? Any idea where??? =:-O
Hmmm... was I dreaming? I thought I read something 
like this on the list, but then again, I might have been mistaken...

/snip
> > It would be best if you tried to incorporate the changes you proposed into
> > the C version of Lua 5.0 beta.
> 
> I thought adding changes to the beta version was being discouraged?

To what other source will you add your changes whilst you wait for 
Lua 5.0 proper?  I also made some modifications.

> Yes, I can program in C. If you want to try out the changes then I can do
> that. At the moment, however, I've mostly only suggested some minor syntax
> enhancements so I'm not sure how much there is to try in that.

EH? When I sum up all the changes you have proposed up to now, 
I think there are at least a dozen, and some would really require 
for the parser to be thoughroughly modified. 

The main reason why I ask for you to make these modifications in 
C is not only to see how it would change Lua, but also to see how 
you would implement some of these changes. Some of them are indeed 
rather trivial, but others are quite difficult to implement.

-- 
"No one knows true heroes, for they speak not of their greatness." -- 
Daniel Remar.
Björn De Meyer 
bjorn.demeyer@pandora.be