in which an escape route is discovered

Phil Hagelberg · 31 Dec 2023 · technomancy.us ↗

3 korrents from this piece

Phil Hagelberg did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Metaprogramming in a language creates fundamental obstacles to static analysis of its code.

Their wordsLanguages with metaprogramming tend to put up fundamental hurdles to static analysis
Our reading
Most macros just transform their arguments, so running them during static analysis is usually safe even though it can't be guaranteed.

Their wordsmost macros don't actually do anything other than pure transformation of their arguments. It's almost always safe to run them during static analysis, except you don't know for sure
Our reading
Lua functions have no true names, since only the variable or field holding them does, making every Lua function effectively anonymous.

Their wordsIn a subtle but very real sense, every Lua function is an anonymous function.