I was excited to learn that, as of Lua 5.4, Lua supports constant (const
) and to-be-closed (close
) variables! However, upon testing these keywords, they don't seem to do anything at all. I wrote the following code to sample the features to get a better grasp of their exact usage:
function f()
local const x = 3
print(x)
x = 2
print(x)
end
f()
function g()
local close x = {}
setmetatable(x, {__close = function() print("closed!") end})
end
g()
I titled the file constCheck.lua
and ran it with lua constCheck.lua
. The output is as follows:
3
2
I was expecting an error on my call to f()
, or at least for it to print 3
twice, instead it seemed to reassign x
with no issue at all. Further, I was expecting the call to g()
to print out "closed!" when x
left scope at the end of the function, but this did not happen. I can't find very many examples of these keywords' usage. Am I using them properly? Do they work?
Note: lua -v => Lua 5.4.0 Copyright (C) 1994-2020 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
This is <const>
not const
, and <close>
not close
See https://lwn.net/Articles/826134/
do
local x <const> = 42
x = x+1
end
-- ERROR: attempt to assign to const variable 'x'
And some example https://github.com/lua/lua/blob/master/testes/code.lua#L11
local k0aux <const> = 0
https://github.com/lua/lua/blob/master/testes/files.lua#L128
local f <close> = assert(io.open(file, "w"))