Re:i t works

[Brian Hook <hook_l@...>]

> IMO, 1 is a bad choice. Programmers will definitely want to list
> directories.

That's absolutely not the case.  As others have pointed out, Lua has 
very different goals than, say, Python or Perl.  This is why Lua vs. 
Python is often an invalid comparison.

> This probably would be a good option. I've programmed in Tcl on two
> occasions (so, not very often, then). One thing I noticed it had
> was an ability to link in DLLs.

This requires that a system support DLLs.  Not all systems do.

There needs to be a distinction between the Lua core -- the language 
and its base implementation -- and all of its packages.  The biggest 
problem, frankly, is that since Lua's core team is very small there is 
no universal core library everyone can rely on.

Lua is a very minimal language.  If anything, I think it could be made 
even more portable and embeddable without losing much in the way of 
functionality.

> yes, they're right, but I'd rather have a some preprocessing
> directives floating around and multiple implementations of the same
> code than for it to lack directory listings. 

But that's _you_.  The effort required to maintain cross-platform 
implementations is _immense_.  I don't think you quite realize how 
immense that is.  

What you're basically asking for is a huge amount of work for what a 
minority of Lua considers a major problem.

> That leaves us with the little matter of:  do you use /, \, :, . or
> <other> to seperate path elements? 

No, it also leaves the issues of file handling, binary vs. text 
formats, drive letters, soft vs. hard links, security/privilege, 
querying special folder paths, and a host of other problems that have 
to be solved for a robust implementation.

> does this really matter? As a Windoze programmer, I don't really
> care what delimiters the UNIX guys use, and vice versa. 

That's you.  A lot of people use and like Lua specifically because it 
is cross-platform and don't want their code to stop working because 
it's run on a new platform.

> All I care is that it works for my platform. 

Right, all YOU care about.

> Put it this way: I know for sure that you can list directories in
> Python without having to resort to extending the language; on UNIX
> and win32 platforms. And I'm fairly confident in saying that Perl
> and Ruby provide that functionality, too. So, it definitely can be
> done!

No one is saying it can't be done, obviously it can.  Lua can also be 
extended to support class hierarchies, static type checking, integer 
support, etc. etc.  But that is not within Lua's _scope_.

Show me a Ruby or Python implementation that is the size of Lua, then 
we can talk.  In the meantime, you might want to look at using 
Ruby/Python/Perl if their philosophies match your own more precisely.

Brian