As I've said many times, a Lua interface would solve a whole raft of issues.
This is really a Basic problem. You can do pretty much whatever you like in C++ or Pascal.There is a good case for keeping Basic simple, and leaving the rocket-science to those who have advanced skills.
It seems to me that adding a bit of name-space awareness to the Basic compiler would allow some nice extensions (in source code) that could be sealed off. It just takes a bit of modularisation.
This (before the anti-OOP crowd shout) is not object-orientated. It has been present in languages like Pascal since 1970s. In Pascal a Unit is a file called <something>.pas. It has an
interface section and an
implementation section. Anything declared in the
interface is available (public) to any other unit which uses it. Anything in the
implementation section is not available. Things can be global to the interface, but not available outside it.
This would make the Basic better for large programs. And if Lua were available we could write import modules that handled all the Lua and had some neat little functions that beginners could use.
-- Jim - When is there going to be a release?
