Re: Pattern matching proposal: %B to match balanced string with specified escape

[Nagaev Boris <bnagaev@...>]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 11:13 AM, Jonathan Goble <jcgoble3@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 2:58 AM, Nagaev Boris <bnagaev@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 9:19 AM, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 2016-01-11 23:42 GMT+02:00 Matthew Wild <mwild1@gmail.com>:
>>>
>>>>> OK. But what are the chances of this being added to stock Lua in the
>>>>> next version?
>>>>
>>>> Based on the number of patches enthusiastically posted to this list,
>>>> and the number that ever get in - I'd say the answer is "very low".
>>>
>>> Jonathan's suggestion is merely a change to a library, not
>>> to core Lua. In such a case, there is an alternative route to
>>> respectability: contribute a module to LuaRocks. Let's say that
>>> the module 'jgstring' returns a function that monkey-patches
>>> the string library, saving the original functions in string.orig.
>>>
>>> Once that is installed, it is a matter of
>>>
>>>    require"jgstring"()
>>>
>>
>> I would prefer if that module returned new function string.match
>> without changing any globals.
>
> The catch here is that in order to create a module containing my new
> functions (find, gmatch, and gsub in addition to match), I (assume)
> would have to copy-and-paste all of the pattern matching code, roughly
> 500 lines of code, into my new module, just to change about 10 to 15
> lines. That does not seem like a reasonable plan of attack.
>
> The only reasonable way to do this, unless I'm missing something, is
> for the change to be made in stock Lua, which is not asking that much
> (given the simplicity of implementation and the lack of any backwards
> compatibility issues).
>
> The only alternative I can see is for me to maintain a lightly
> modified fork of Lua on GitHub that makes my changes available,
> possibly by defining a symbol like LUA_CUSTOM_BALANCE. I'm considering
> doing this anyway, but at this stage, I'd really rather not be
> maintaining a fork.
>

Maintaining a rock is simpler than maintaining a fork. And it worth to
make a rock even if it was added to stock Lua, because a rock can be
installed in Lua 5.1.

-- 


Best regards,
Boris Nagaev