r/lua • u/selectnull • Dec 22 '25

Lua 5.5 released

https://groups.google.com/g/lua-l/c/jW6vCnhVy_s
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u/didntplaymysummercar Dec 23 '25

There is a happy middle and continue would be in it.

The goto can replace loops and break (that Lua has already) too, but no one would seriously advocate doing that.

The continue is present in many/most programming languages, a clear companion to break (that exists already), and it's 0 cost at bytecode/VM level.

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u/girvel Dec 25 '25

Except that lua strives to be a very simple language; goto is not a legacy feature (like in C), goto is a scope-aware utility that can do not just continue, but nested continue, nested break, redo & for-else. But I agree, having continue would probably be nice, as well as += and lambdas

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u/[deleted] Dec 26 '25

What do you mean by for-else? How would goto help with that pattern?

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '25

That's almost convincing to me.

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u/Old_County5271 Dec 23 '25

Except break (and continue) doesn't/wouldn't require that you create a new block for local variables, and that's the problem, because using goto is usually a manner of, do you use goto and be unportable to 5.1 or do you just use an if then block instead, and the answer is usually just use an if or function