Hi List,
Here is my two-in-one proposal :
* PROPOSAL 1: Create a JSON-like Lua-compatible format (we can call it LTN for Lua Table Notation or LuT for LuaTable or whatever you want).
This format must be:
- A subset of the Lua grammar (the Lua-compatible part), so that we don’t need another parser to read those data in a Lua enabled software.
- Easy to read in another language (the JSON-like part), so that it could be a JSON replacement for data interchange.
- Bonus: Supported by the official Lua website, to give more visibility to either this data format and Lua.
* PROPOSAL 2: Change the behavior of dofile, load, loadfile, etc. so that if the source only contains a table, the returned chunk returns this table.
Some examples here:
- example 1:
local position = load(“{ x = 5, y = 10 }”)()
- example 2:
-- my_light_module.lua:
{
var = “some value”,
log = function(self, …) print("log: ", ...) end
}
-- now you can do: local my_mod = require ’my_light_module’
-- note that this example has very limited use cases, because log can't access var
- example 3:
local data = dofile 'my_data.lut' -- here is the link between the two proposals :)
Maybe this behavior could also be extended to return the value if the source contains only a boolean, a string or a number.
* Here is a LTN grammar proposal example:
tableconstructor ::= ‘{’ [fieldlist] ‘}’
key ::= false | true | Number | String
value ::= key | tableconstructor | nil
fieldlist ::= field {fieldsep field} [fieldsep]
field ::= ‘[’ key ‘]’ ‘=’ value | Name ‘=’ value | value
fieldsep ::= ‘,’ | ‘;’
Maybe tableconstructor should be allowed in key to tease non-Lua users, but it can complicate the internal storage when parsed in some other languages ...
And in a such format, Number, String and Name must be defined more precisely.
What do you think about this proposal?
Julien
PS: I like the way the JSON grammar is displayed on http://www.json.org/
