Re: Standard for Lua

[Norman Ramsey <nr@...>]

 > > Language standards probably made more sense when all implementations were
 > > secrets owned by companies but with open source there is always one
 > > definitive implementation anyway. It seems like a long time ago, but
 > > JavaScript was actually proprietary once and there is still
 > > (intentionally) no single reference implementation. That's why the ECMA
 > > standard is useful there, perhaps.
 > 
 > However, you can consider this a feature, rather than a failing. Having a
 > well-defined standard means that you can have multiple coexisting
 > implementations, each of which is verified against the standard. 

To add my two cents: I have implemented two different versions of Lua
that are integrated with ML in the same way that the 'real' Lua is
integrated with C.  Of course the APIs are completely different, and
there are language differences as well; for example, it would be very
difficult for me to implement 'dump'.  In a truly wonderful world it
would be great to have a standard that made it easier for Lua to cross
language boundaries: Lua-ML, Lua-Java, Lua-Haskell... the mind boggles.

In the real world, I think it would be a prodigious waste of time
better spent on static-analysis tools that can help detect and prevent
errors in Lua programs that grow to thousands of lines...


Norman