RE: ~= vs. !=

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

> > > It's not a big deal, but I'm curious. Is there any intention of
> > > including '!=' as an alternative to '~='? I was even thinking
> > > about including that locally myself, but it would be very nice
> > > if the standard syntax supported it as well.
> >
> > I don't think there is any intention of doing this. You can make the
> > change easily, I think its only one character. But, as soon as you
do it
> > you don't have Lua, you have another language.
> 
> Yep.. that's the point. But if I advertise it as another language, Lua
> loses. If I make no change in that regard, users are losing since
> that's the most usual 'not equal' operator (C, Python, Perl, Ruby,
> Shell, etc).
> 
> I see no point in not doing such an easy addition.
> 
> > Lua is not C!
> 
> Oh, thank you. I wasn't aware about this. :-)

Good job I pointed it out then! :-)

The point is that Lua is Lua and all languages are different. I've
encountered people who

#define Begin {
#define End }

in C so they can program like Pascal. Then you end up with some hideous
half way solution which other people find difficult to maintain. Don't
try and turn one language into another, it's a mistake, you'll end with
Perl.


> > IMHO if it was to be changed "~=" should be abandoned and all code
> > changed over to "!=". Having two optional forms of ~= would be
silly.
> 
> Breaking compatibility with older scripts would be even sillier.

But scripts were broken when we went to 5.0. Core functions were put in
tables, upvalues were removed and we have metamethods instead of tags.
How is this different? Avoiding all these optional elements is how you
keep a language small and simple.

I can see the merit of adding "#" for comments (well, the first line
anyway) so you can write Lua shell scripts, but "--" seems fine to me.

When do these optional syntax changes end? There was a request for
optional "do" as well. The syntax seems to have settled a little now but
adding lots of optional syntax could just make Lua more cryptic in the
future. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. -- That's just my opinion, if
the majority want != then I'm not going to stand in anybodys way but
let's just have one != operator.

Regards, (my 2p :)

Nick