Re: Lua string library partially reimplemented in Lua

["Alex Davies" <alex.mania@...>]

David Manura wrote:
> On another point, I think it's inconsistent that Lua's VM has an
> opcode to obtain the length in bytes of a string (i.e. # s), but
> there's no opcode to obtain the i-th character or byte of a string
> (e.g. s[i]).

I thought the same originally, but unfortunately I believe it's the best as 
is. Otherwise it seems quite inconsistent that they can be indexed read, but 
not written:

local a = "hello"
assert(a[1] == "h")
a[1] = "b"

Besides, any jiter should inline the call. (and luajit 2.x may even do a 
good job of avoiding the :str lookup).

(Unrelated though, but something I'd like to see in jit 2.x would be things 
such as "if str:sub(1, 2) == "__" then" remove the string creation and just 
compare the first two bytes - just because it's a fairly common operation in 
my code at least).

- Alex