Hi! I am unclear about a few things which I wondered if you could shed light upon:
1) In the MakeRing(Ring) function of pg 145. When the functions are being assigned to the Ring table:
for Name, Fnc in pairs(Methods) do
   Ring[Name] = Fnc
end
are complete copies of the functions being stored in the ring table, or simply pointers to the already existing functions in the Methods table?

2) In a similar vein, when functions are created as closures, is it a copy of the upvalue referred to in the external function that is created in the function, or simply a pointer to the upvalue?
E.g. using the example from the previous post:
local A = 10

local function Fnc(B)
  return A + B
end

print(Fnc(5))

when Fnc is created is a copy of the value of A (10) stored in Fnc or simply a pointer to A itself?

Regards, Ken

Hi Ken,

Good questions!

> When the functions are being assigned to the Ring table:

> for Name, Fnc in pairs(Methods) do
> Ring[Name] = Fnc
> end

> are complete copies of the functions being stored in the ring
> table, or simply pointers to the already existing functions
> in the Methods table?

The pointer model is closer to the truth (the assignment is
"cheap", not "deep"), although see Rici Lake's excellent
posting to the Lua mailing list for a clearer and more accurate
way of looking at references in Lua:

  http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2005-09/msg00056.html

> In a similar vein, when functions are created as closures, is
> it a copy of the upvalue referred to in the external function
> that is created in the function, or simply a pointer to the
> upvalue?

Again, the pointer model is more (but not completely) accurate.
By adding a couple lines to your example, you can see that it
is A, not the value A happens to be mapped to, that is captured
by Fnc as an upvalue.

  local A = 10

  local function Fnc(B)
    return A + B
  end

  print(Fnc(5)) --> 15

  A = 20

  print(Fnc(5)) --> 25

All the best,

Kurt

Thanks for the speedy reply Kurt. I shall read Rici's article with interest. Regards, Ken.