Re: Lua string library partially reimplemented in Lua

[Enrico Colombini <erix@...>]

Mark Meijer wrote:
> Perhaps bit fields should be treated more as an opaque "type", only
> allowing operations to set and clear specific bits by means of the
> usual bitwise operators. This may be limiting in some ways, but it
> probably also means much simpler semantics, and no unnecessary
> conversion issues.

I'm afraid this could be too limiting: suppose you want to use bitwise 
operators to convert characters between different representations, or to 
manipulate table indexes, or to operate on values kept as integers in 
C/C++ structures, or simply to read/write values from/to files, etc.

At the very least, this opaque type should be convertable from/to 
integers at the least possible cost... which probably means just keeping 
it as integer and using (implicitly or explicitly) Mike's bit.tobit 
operator.

  Enrico