There is a way of deducing the “local path” of a file (more concretely, the string that was used to load the file). If you are requiring a file inside lib.foo.bar, you might be doing something like this: require ‘lib.foo.bar’ Then you can get the path to the file as the first element (and only) … Read more
You can use ls -lrt -d -1 “$PWD”/{*,.*} It will also catch hidden files.
Since you say “embedded system” and “small and fast” and “integrate nicely” I would say you are correct that Lua is the number one if not the only choice. But I no longer agree that the programming language has “quirky corners”. Firstly, the book Programming in Lua is simply splendid, one of the best books … Read more
You can use io.popen() instead. This returns a file handle you can use to read the output of the command. Something like the following may work: local handle = io.popen(command) local result = handle:read(“*a”) handle:close() Note that this will include the trailing newline (if any) that the command emits.
Mike Pall has talked about this in a few places: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lua.general/58908 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3851 http://www.reddit.com/user/mikemike As with every performant system, the answer in the end comes down to two things: algorithms and engineering. LuaJIT uses advanced compilation techniques, and it also has a very finely engineered implementation. For example, when the fancy compilation techniques can’t handle a … Read more
package.path = package.path .. “;../?.lua” will work for both.
This is a very interesting question. My day job is to study programming languages, and Lua will repay careful study. I would say that about very few other languages (perhaps Icon and CLU). Please note that it is the language as a whole, not the individual features, which makes Lua so worthy of study. Is … Read more
Are any common samples where lua pattern matching is “better” compared to regular expression? It is not so much particular examples as that Lua patterns have a higher signal-to-noise ratio than POSIX regular expressions. It is the overall design that is often preferable, not particular examples. Here are some factors that contribute to the good … Read more
Table copy has many potential definitions. It depends on whether you want simple or deep copy, whether you want to copy, share or ignore metatables, etc. There is no single implementation that could satisfy everybody. One approach is to simply create a new table and duplicate all key/value pairs: function table.shallow_copy(t) local t2 = {} … Read more
You could use something like a set from Programming in Lua: function Set (list) local set = {} for _, l in ipairs(list) do set[l] = true end return set end Then you could put your list in the Set and test for membership: local items = Set { “apple”, “orange”, “pear”, “banana” } if … Read more