Re: Next Version of Lua?

[Mark Hamburg <mark@...>]

On Jun 11, 2009, at 8:27 PM, David Manura wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 4:08 PM,  wrote:
> > Still it would be good to provide better support for ... in more  
> > contexts
> > barring conflicts with existing syntax so that the quadratic  
> > tendencies of
> > select could be minimized.
>
> Previous discussions:
>
>  http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2008-04/msg00205.html
>  http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2006-04/msg00120.html
>
> I do, however, question why #... and #(...) and also ...[i] and
> (...)[i] necessarily must have the same meaning given that f(...) and
> f((...)) have different meanings.

Yes, it's been a pet bugaboo for me. Even if for realistic numbers of  
arguments the quadratic complexity doesn't bite one, I feel dirty  
writing such code knowing it's there and on the other hand knowing  
that the linear algorithms carry extra cost is again annoying because  
it means that in the realistic case, they actually are less efficient  
(though not by much).

I should probably just get over it (one way or the other).

Mark