Re: The Undefined Country (was Re: Quest: real world "Lua array with holes" usage)

[Philipp Janda <siffiejoe@...>]

Am 25.07.2016 um 17:48 schröbte steve donovan:
> On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 5:42 PM, Doug Currie <doug.currie@gmail.com> wrote:
> > condition expression with a comparison operator or a boolean variable.
> > Otherwise the intention is not clear. Use strong typing, avoid automatic
> > conversions!
>
> Increasingly I'm tending that way - the amount of magic that can be
> crammed into a simple if is worrying.  One thing which would
> definitely be a misfeature would be a _bool metamethod.

Why?

Lua already has boolean conversions for all of its values (everything 
except `nil` and `false` converts to `true`). The question is whether 
the programmer should be able to decide which boolean is chosen for a 
particular value.

And btw., `__bool` would allow you to *forbid* automatic conversion to 
booleans as well, simply by throwing an error in the `__bool` metamethod.


Philipp