Re: Auxlib documentation

[Philippe Lhoste <PhiLho@...>]

Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo wrote:
> On the other hand, requests for documentation of lauxlib are very rare.
> Does this mean that no one is using it?
> Or perhaps no one is really writing library code by hand,
> relying instead on tolua or luabind or luna or whatever.

I read this quite lately, as I save this message for reference, without
reading it first...
I am one of those writing library code by hand, and finding lauxlib very
useful.
I like to have fine control over the way functions handle arguments and
return values, and convert raw C 
function results to Lua friendly data.
I suppose that if I have to wrap a very big library for my job (with limited
time), I would use one of these 
wrappers, but until now, I have done it by hand.

Actually, my experience is a bit limited: I wrapped a simple address book
API, so I could write little Lua 
programs to test this API, see how to use it, find bugs, etc.
I did it for my job, but it is not worth going to the official uses of Lua,
because it was only semi-official and 
quite confidential (it is probably unmaintained or even forgotten now...).
It has an interesting way of handling errors, so I may write an article on
the subject someday.

Currently, I wrap a number of Win32 API functions, so I can use Lua to
script Windows. It will be always a 
work in progress, but I will make it available as soon as it will have a
usable number of features.

Anyway, I didn't ask for lauxlib documentation, because at least in the 4.0
version, it was quite simple and 
easy to understand by reading the code.
The 5.0 version seems a bit harder, so your explainations are welcome.

As I always say, studying lua.c and l*lib.c is very enlightening, as the
manual is sometime a bit terse: it is 
a reference, not a tutorial. Now, a few more comments here and there would
be welcome :-)

Regards.

-- 
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Philippe Lhoste (Paris -- France)
Professional programmer and amateur artist
http://jove.prohosting.com/~philho/
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