Lua journey

it has now occurred to me that using Lua along with Gemini is a great combo

Misc

What i find neat is that functions for each data type are grouped under global "table" of sorts. something akin to static class, providing static methods in traditional OOP languages. Making a library and including it is as easy as it is in Python, you just return the library table and then require the filename.

Multiple return

Lua has multiple return values and destructuring syntax (similiar to the one found in Goland and JS):

function square(a)
return 4*a, a*a
end

local circum, area = square(3) --> 12, 9

Global table

Apparently you can alias stuff in lua just like that:

_G.echo = _G.print

echo "foo" --> prints "foo"

A peek inside the table

There is no way to check if an element is inside the table, so just for convenience i'll put this here

function table.has(t, v)
for _, e in pairs(t) do
if e == v then
return true
end
end
return false
end

function table.hask(t, k)
for i in pairs(t) do
if i == k then
return true
end
end
return false
end

local tab = {1, 2, 3, ["x"] = "foo"}
table.has(tab, 1)    --> true
table.hask(tab, "x") --> true
table.hask(tab, 4)   --> false

Templates

I kinda missed the templates from Golang, so here's something really darn simple:

function render(str, t)
str = string.gsub(str, "%(%( .(%w+) %)%)", function (a)
if t[a] ~= nil then
return t[a]
end
return ""
end)
return str
end

local s = "Hello (( .name ))"
render(s, { name = "Fred", age = 21 }) --> "Hello Fred"