Re: Next Version of Lua?

[Niklas Frykholm <niklas@...>]

2009/6/10 Olivier Hamel <evilpineapple@cox.net>:
> Ah, I thank you for point this page out to me. I'll take this opportunity to
> dump my suggestions/wishes/hopes for Lua 5.2. Basically Lua 5.1 is very
> close to what I would consider the penultimate scripting language

I'm using lua as a game scripting language and the only thing I'm
missing is support for fast value types, i. e. user-created objects
with the same semantics as lua_Numbers.

Currently, if you want to create Complex or Vector3 type you have to
do it as a table or a userdata. And if you do a serious ammount of
processing on them, the ammount of garbage generated by simple
arithmetic operations will soon put a significant strain on the
system. (You could use a pool of such objects, but that would mean
resorting to manual memory management with all its pains - especially
when you are using it for something as simple as numbers.)

A generational garbage collector could be an alternative to value
types, I guess. Provided it is fast and smart enough to keep up with
the arithmetic garbage.

// Niklas