

Lua 5.2.0 (work1) now available - silentbicycle
http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2010-01/msg00260.html

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twrensch
There's some information in the readme.html file included with the
distribution, and a bit more in the manual.

Work versions are aimed at the active lua community as a way to get feedback
on features before they are finalized.

Very quick summary:

new syntax for lexical 'sandbox' environments

hex escapes in strings

tables and strings support _len metamethod

__pairs and __ipairs metamethod for iterator support

improvements to GC, week tables, xpcall

~~~
asb
One of the Lua authors has recently posted a more thorough summary:

<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lua.general/61505>

The in keyword has been very controversial as with it comes the deprecation of
setfenv and getfenv, which are very useful for sandboxing and other tricks.
The inclusion of a standard bit operations library is also a big deal, though
Mike Pall (author of LuaJIT and LuaBitOp) has raised some objections.

~~~
silentbicycle
Indeed. About a week ago, I wrote an extension to load modules in a proxy for
hot code loading. It's pretty closely tied to get/setfenv. It's still too new
to share, but I'm going to see if I can get it working with 5.2. Requiring the
debug library (for debug.[sg]etfenv) will be a dealbreaker for some people.

------
nuclear_eclipse
Is there a good overview anywhere summarizing the changes/improvements since
Lua 5.1?

~~~
whyenot
Yes, Roberto Ierusalimschy posted a more complete list of changes to the email
list:

<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lua.general/61505>

