[Lua-users-stdlib] Upheaval (blame Jamie Webb!)

[Reuben T. <rr...@sc...>]

I have just committed some changes provoked by Jamie Webb's submission of
his std.lua library, which was mostly aimed at core functionality
(manipulation of arrays, sets, tables and functions).

So far I have incorporated all the stuff which matched existing functions.
I've also removed some functions (from my stuff) that didn't look that
useful and made other miscellaneous fixes and improvements that occurred
to me as I read through the code.

I'm left mostly with the functions that don't match anything I have, which
I'll divide into groups: those I have no problems with and will go ahead
and add later, those I don't think are necessary, and those I don't know
what to do with:

The following are fine:

	function std.succ(x)
	function std.generate(f, start, length)
        function std.deep_copy(t)   (but what to call it and shallow_copy?)
	function std.intersect(a, b)    -- I'll reimplement my set module
	function std.difference(a, b)   -- with these in mind, probably
                                        -- getting rid of my set type

The following look good but I'm not sure how best to handle them:

	function std.dump(value, key, fh, depth, pr, done) -- better done
              -- by reimplementing my tostring using a visitor and then
              -- reusing the visitor for dump
        the functionalised operators +, -, .. &c. -- not sure how best to
              -- include these, e.g. how to name them, how general they
              -- really should be (arity &c.)

The following I plain don't understand:

	function std.getter(name)      -- what's this for?
	function std.method(name, ...) -- what's this for?
	function std.bind_method(t, m) -- what's this for?

I'm dubious about the following:

	function std.map_tbl(f, t)     -- it is really wise to map over a table?
	function std.filter_tbl(f, t)  -- these should only be used on lists/arrays IMO

	function std.conjunction(...)  -- this seems a bit specialised;
                                          it's really reverseMap composed
                                          with functionalised "and"

-- 
http://www.mupsych.org/~rrt/ | perfect, a.  unsatirizable