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gsck 2 days ago

Cannot wait for another version of Lua to sit unused basically everywhere.

Truly is a shame, everything seems to have settled on 5.1 for the most part without ever being updated, or any intention of it being updated. Some really nice features post 5.1

I understand each version of Lua introduces breaking changes in the language, which isn't great as the language becomes fragmented (Or not really, once again 5.1 is pretty ubiquitous)

ronsor 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The real reason everyone settled on Lua 5.1 is because that's the version LuaJIT is compatible with, and most people are unwilling to give up the performance gains.

Rochus 2 days ago | parent [-]

And Luau.

pull_my_finger 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

5.1 (by way of LuaJIT) gets a lot of use, but to suggests no one uses the modern versions is just not true. Lua being an embedded language just takes the pressure away to upgrade. It's a feature, not a bug.

BugsJustFindMe 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> everything seems to have settled on 5.1

Not exactly. LuaJIT has backported various hot features from 5.2 and 5.3 as long as they're unlikely to break 5.1 code.

thayne a day ago | parent | next [-]

True. But

1. The luajit documentation basically just had a list of features. AFAIK there isn't any documentation that combines the 5.1 reference with luajit extensions (including things that were backported)

2. In some cases, for example Neovim, luajit extensions aren't guaranteed to be available. It just says there will be a lua runtime compatible with 5.1. Which means a truly portable neovim plugin can't use those extensions

3. There are features from later lua versions I would like to have (in particular <const> and <close>) that will probably never get backported.

4. Some features require luajit to be built with special flags

petcat a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm pretty sure that's only OpenResty's distribution of LuaJIT.

I think the real LuaJIT is strictly 5.1

Tharre a day ago | parent | next [-]

Not true, see "Extensions from Lua 5.2" here: https://luajit.org/extensions.html

reactordev a day ago | parent | prev [-]

No, real LuaJIT has some features from 5.2 and 5.3

https://luajit.org/extensions.html

a day ago | parent | prev [-]
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