Re: table.clear

[Coda Highland <chighland@...>]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 12:22 PM, Luther <lutheroto@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2013-12-13 at 12:00 -0800, Coda Highland wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 11:28 AM, Luther <lutheroto@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Fri, 2013-12-13 at 12:52 -0600, Andrew Starks wrote:
>> >> I was working with defining an "object" that holds a list. Due some
>> >> ways in which it'd be used, the list has a metatable. When someone
>> >> sets the list to `nil`, i need to clear it.
>
>> > Maybe I misunderstand your question. As a Lua coder, when I assign nil
>> > to something, I expect the former value to simply be deleted (assuming
>> > no other references). Would it not be better to write a 'clear' method
>> > that does what you want?
>> >
>> > Luther
>>
>> I believe what you've missed is a recent thread requesting a
>> table.wipe function to the C API that could wipe a table more
>> efficiently than iterating over the contents and nil'ing out every
>> entry. This appears to be a request for functionality in this proposed
>> function.
>>
>> /s/ Adam
>
> I did see that thread, but when Andrew says "When someone sets the list
> to `nil`, i need to clear it.", it sounds like this:
>
> local list = createListAndFillItWithStuff()
>
> -- This magically clears the table, not the variable.
> list = nil
>
> I don't see how else to interpret his question.
>
> Luther
>

Ah, I slightly misread.

I do have a question, though, of why __gc won't work for this.

/s/ Adam