Re: Function statement name syntax in Lua

On Thursday, January 29, 2026 at 11:16:26PM UTC+10 Jure Bagić wrote:
> Is there any reason this syntax for the function statement name is not 
valid in
> Lua:
> > global mymodule = {};
> > local name = "OK";
> > function mymodule[name] (a, b, ...t)
> > ...
> > end
>
> In the above, the statement name of the function is invalid as mymodule 
table
> can only be indexed with '.' ('funcname' in the parser) and end with ':'. 
The
> only thing I can think of is that the '.' syntax looks better (more 
readable)
> and the potential errors in '[]' might be hard to debug (expressions => 
calls =>
> metamethods, etc...). However, still not convinced why such decision 
("crying
> baby noise").
> [...]

For the final function one reason could be because you have no equivalent 
way to
call it with a self parameter.

So we have the following for functions as sugar:

function module.this.that(a, b, c) end
-- equivalent to
module.this.that = function(a, b, c) end

function module.this:that(a, b, c) end
-- equivalent to
module.this.that = function(self, a, b, c) end

Is your question also that '.this' above can't be replaced with '[this]'?
(and the final function name is still .that or :that)

    ~$ lua -e 'function module[this].that(a, b, c) end'
    lua: (command line):1: '(' expected near '['

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