Lua library API design

[Rici Lake <lua@...>]

I forgot to mention my favorite bugbear in API bindings.

C does not have a true boolean type, so it typically uses 0 and 
non-zero integers. Given APIs typically either return 0/failure 
1/success or 0/success non-zero/error or 0/success -1/look in 'error' 
for the error or...

That's a pain, and it should not be translated to Lua APIs. Lua 
provides a clear mechanism for error returns (well, two of them if you 
include the pcall convention). OS interfaces which simply return the 
integer result are, in my opinion, un-Lua-like and unnecessarily thin. 
(And as awkward as the original C interface.)