Re: Alternative to ~= for inequality?

On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 11:28 AM, Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com> wrote:

On Sat, 09 Feb 2013 03:04:52 +1100
Ross Bencina <rossb-lists@audiomulch.com> wrote:

> On 9/02/2013 12:50 AM, Joseph Manning wrote:
> >>> Appeal to Lua developers: is there any chance of at least
> >>> adding != as
> >>> >>an alternative in the next release?
> > Nooooooo! Please don't Perl-ise it.
>
> "Perl-ise" o.O You gotta be kidding. That's the only language you
> know with != ?

I can think of essentially 4 Lua specificities (call them quirks if you want)

* not equal operator is ~=

* lists start at index 1

* 0 and '0' are always true (I actually tend to like that, and I do not wish for a PHP-like === operator)

* In Lua patterns (string.find) "*" and "-" both mean 0 or more occurrences. (this one is responsible for quite a few bugs and headaches on my end).

I think every single one of them has probably been discussed at length on the mailing list, and I don't expect any of the maintainers to comment on this "issue".

Personally, I tend to just keep them in the back of my mind when I program in Lua, but overall I find Lua a sane and consistent language compared to many others.

Matthieu.