[ANN] LuMaX (or yet more macros for Lua)

[Thomas Lauer <thomas.lauer@...>]

This package, which is loosely based on steve d.'s LuaMacro code[1,2],
implements textual macros for Lua. WRT to steve's module I changed the
lexer and the way macros are defined and expanded and also streamlined
most functions.

Macros can now be defined in the same file in which they're used; macros
in macros are possible as well. The expansion part of a macro is now
normal Lua code (i.e. it's neither a string nor are there special
delimiters necessary).

The module requires a version of Lua with lhf's token filter code
patched in. To use it, call Lua with a script filename like that:

  lua -l macro test.lua

or

  lua -l macrolpeg test.lua

As you can see, there are two similar implementations; both are pure
Lua. macro.lua uses a lexer that's based on Lua's pattern matching while
macrolpeg.lua works with an lpeg-based lexer.

I have tweaked and tested both lexers with many small and big files;
both seem to work reasonably well. However, there may still be cases
where either (or both) produce nonsense: I'd very much like to hear
about such problems.

For larger files the lpeg-based lexer is significantly faster than the
pattern-matching lexer but to see any measurable difference you'd have
to feed them several dozen KB worth of stuff. For the macro package the
differences are probably negligible.

Development was originally done for the next beta version of Idle; I
"backported" the code to Lua 5.1.3. All tests were done under Windows
but I think the whole thing should work with any Lua 5.1.x version so
long as the token filter patch is available.

If there's something not working as it should please drop me a note
(however, see the readme if you run into trouble with a lua interpreter,
like lua.exe, in interactive mode).

Time permitting I will scrape together some documentation; till then the
example scripts and the source code should show the way forward:-)

Download full source and examples:
http://thomaslauer.com/download/LuMaX.zip


[1] http://luaforge.net/projects/luamacro/
[2] http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaMacros