I'm just getting started doing my first real thing with Lua. I'm creating a new software package management system; I think it's time for something simpler than rpm. Naturally, the first problem that has to be solved is the spec file parser, and naturally I chose Lua for that:-). Here's a sample spec file for my current prototype lashup: name = "bash"; version = "2.05b"; nv = name .. version; -- name-version, helper for below sf = nv .. ".tar.gz"; -- source filename, similarly url = "http://mirrors.kernel.org/gnu/"; .. name .. "/" .. sf; build = "tar xzvf " .. sf .. " && cd " .. nv .. [[ && ./configure --enable-static-link --prefix=/usr --with-curses && make && make prefix=$BPM_ROOT install ]]; The "nv" and "sv" variables aren't actually needed by the packaging system, they're just there to make the url and build string building less tedious. This: url = "http://mirrors.kernel.org/gnu/"; .. name .. "/" .. name .. "-" .. version .. ".tar.gz"; I call tedious. And the build string gets even worse. Would that I could do something like url = "http://mirrors.kernel.org/gnu/%{name}/%{name}-%{version}.tar.gz";; (rpm syntax), or anything vaguely comparable. I'd really prefer that over having to stop the string, use the concatenation operator, and restart the string each time. Does anybody have any brilliant hack for arranging for nice generalized variable interpolation into strings? I can of course take other approaches, e.g. name = "bash"; version = "2.05b"; nv = name .. version; -- name-version, helper for below sf = nv .. ".tar.gz"; -- source filename, similarly url = string.format("http://mirrors.kernel.org/gnu/%s/%s";, name, sf); build = string.format([[tar xzvf %s && cd %s && ./configure --enable-static-link --prefix=/usr --with-curses && make && make prefix=$BPM_ROOT install ]], sf, nv); or explicitly invoking string.gsub, but all of these alternatives, at least to my tastes, make the resulting spec file a bit more opaque --- especially to people who aren't fluent in Lua. -Bennett
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