Lookup nil table index

[lua@...]

Hello,

I'm working on code with quite deep tables. When referring to an element
in the table, I use the table keys joined by dots, eg:

	a = thing.foo.bar.this.that

When one of the indicated elements does not exist, an error is generated
for apperent reasons: attempt to index nil value.

For my application, I'd like such an expression to return a nil value
instead of generating an error. Would it be possible to create such a
behaviour ? I've tried to create something like it with __index on
metatables - this avoids the errors, but returns the table itself
instead of nil :

  thing = {}
  b = {}
  
  thing.name = "blablah"
  
  b.__index = function(t, k)
    return thing
  end
  
  setmetatable(thing, b)
  
  printf("%s\n", tostring(thing.name))
  printf("%s\n", tostring(thing.foo))
  printf("%s\n", tostring(thing.foo.bar))
  
Can anybody think of a solution for this ?


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