[JW Lua] RFC: Adding Methods/Properties to RGP Lua that only exist in certain Finale versions

[Daniel Grunwald]

Hi there, 

it seems my first reply didn't get through. So I repeat it. I case you receive this twice you know why. 

I am a lua novice having no actual experience in lua so my idea might be foolish. However from what I learned in terms of clean code in other languages I would prefer to raise an error instead of not providing the function.
In order to deal with this users will have to use pcall, as described in https://www.lua.org/pil/8.4.html

Although not knowing if it really is (by lack experience) to me it sounds like a cleaner approach.

However if you like to use the nil-approach I suggest putting "OrNil" as suffix to the function's name so the name indicates it possibly being nil.

Hope this was helpful.

Best regards
Daniel

Von meinem Xperia™ von Sony-Smartphone gesendet

---- jwlua-request at jwmusic.nu schrieb ----

>Send JWLua mailing list submissions to
>	jwlua at jwmusic.nu
>
>To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>	http://jwmusic.nu/mailman/listinfo/jwlua_jwmusic.nu
>or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>	jwlua-request at jwmusic.nu
>
>You can reach the person managing the list at
>	jwlua-owner at jwmusic.nu
>
>When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>than "Re: Contents of JWLua digest..."
>
>
>Today's Topics:
>
>   1. RFC: Adding Methods/Properties to RGP Lua that only exist in
>      certain Finale versions (Robert Patterson)
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2022 15:03:15 -0500
>From: Robert Patterson <robert at robertgpatterson.com>
>To: "The JW Lua script plug-in." <jwlua at jwmusic.nu>
>Subject: [JW Lua] RFC: Adding Methods/Properties to RGP Lua that only
>	exist in certain Finale versions
>Message-ID:
>	<CAACnceu23XaymU4XNBZQ-1e6wDdP5xP6-ht8fdk3trUduahrUA at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>I will soon be adding to RGP Lua some methods and properties that are not
>available before a certain Finale version. Previously when this has
>happened, the methods and properties appear in all Finale versions but
>return a default value in earlier Finale versions where they aren't
>supported. Until now there has always been an appropriate default value.
>
>However, these new methods and properties I plan to add do not have useful
>default values in earlier Finale versions. In fact, it would be a bad idea
>to return anything at all unless running in an supported Finale version.
>
>To me the best solution would appear to be not to hook up these methods and
>properties to Lua if the Finale version doesn't support them. But that
>means, in perpetuity, Lua programmers will have to check them for `nil`
>before calling them. Does anyone have other/better ideas?
>-------------- next part --------------
>An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
>URL: <http://jwmusic.nu/pipermail/jwlua_jwmusic.nu/attachments/20220822/224e51a5/attachment-0001.html>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Subject: Digest Footer
>
>_______________________________________________
>JWLua mailing list
>JWLua at jwmusic.nu
>http://jwmusic.nu/mailman/listinfo/jwlua_jwmusic.nu
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>End of JWLua Digest, Vol 94, Issue 5
>************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://jwmusic.nu/pipermail/jwlua_jwmusic.nu/attachments/20220824/8b28a6d4/attachment.htm>