Make io module a builtin in Nelua

[stefanos82]

With Lua I use either string.format() to format my output or go with io.write().

When I want to format output in Nelua, I'm forced to require either string or io.

Can we make at least io part of Nelua's core? It could help a lot.

Cheers.

[edubart]

Actually I'm currently studying a way to do this, because I want to move print, assert, error, and other builtin functions to pure Nelua code, and making them use io is an option, but there are few problems at the moment that I am looking to solve:

1. Not all applications uses io, for example in AVR using io does not make sense, also would break compilation because the io module always imports symbols not available in AVR like stdout.
2. Always importing io would always import the GC, but I've made some workarounds that, I am still experimenting though.
3. Always importing io would impact compile speed for applications that don't use io module, are you fine with this?

I will keep researching a way to do this, with all that in mind, thanks for the suggestion.

[stefanos82]

Actually I'm currently studying a way to do this, because I want to move print, assert, error,
and other builtin functions to pure Nelua code, and making them use io is an option, but there are
few problems at the moment that I am looking to solve:

1. Not all applications uses io, for example in AVR using io does not make sense, also would break compilation because the io module always imports symbols not available in AVR like stdout.

So AVR microcontrollers don't have access to I/O?

2. Always importing io would always import the GC, but I've made some workarounds that, I am still experimenting though.

I have found uLua which is suited for AVR 8-bit and seems like they use io and string.format() ChunkSpy.lua#L389

Maybe you could advice its C code and see their workarounds?

3. Always importing io would impact compile speed for applications that don't use io module, are you fine with this?

That is something I didn't think it would affect the compilation procedure, as I'm constantly using it in Lua and never noticed the slightest thing.

I will keep researching a way to do this, with all that in mind, thanks for the suggestion.

No worries.

[edubart]

1. Not all applications uses io, for example in AVR using io does not make sense, also would break compilation because the io module always imports symbols not available in AVR like stdout.
2. Always importing io would always import the GC, but I've made some workarounds that, I am still experimenting though.
3. Always importing io would impact compile speed for applications that don't use io module, are you fine with this?

I've made progress in 1. and 2., now when you do require 'io' the C code gen is much smaller, this makes things more approachable to make io a core module in the future once I finish some other details.

[stefanos82]

Very nice, well done 👍