Re: Lua 5.2 wish item: Splicing

[Javier Guerra <javier@...>]

Mark Hamburg wrote:
> I'm thinking that something along the following lines would be useful:
>
>     column{
>         spacing = 10,
>         $makeChildren(),
>         view{
>             title = "footer",
>         }
>     }
>
> Where the $ means that we take all of the results from the function rather
> than just the first. (And if it has no results, we also reflect that.) I
> would also be quite open to other syntaxes.

i'd prefer to have it the other way around, that is using all values by 
default.

e.g, having this multivalue function:

function foo ()
	return 1,2,3
end

the function itself returns all values, and all values are used:

foo() => 1,2,3
{foo()} => {1,2,3}
{0,foo(),4} => {0,1,2,3,4}
bar(foo ()) => bar(1,2,3)
bar(0,foo(),4) => bar(0,1,2,3,4)

but wrapping the call with parenthesis, only the first returned value is 
used:

(foo()) => 1
{(foo()} => {1}
{0,(foo()),4} => {0,1,4}
bar((foo())) => bar(1)
bar(0,(foo()),4) => bar(0,1,4)

unfortunately, it would break a lot of old code.