lua multiple assignment

Question

is there any way of multiple assignment in lua such that the missing values on the right side are not considered as nil ?

smth analogous to

     a,b,c = 1

but getting

     a = 1, b = 1, c = 1

as result.

Unfortunately,

    a = b = c = 1

doesn't work.

I need this because I might have complex tables on the right side and I want to keep it short and simple (without any additional variables).

Answer 1

Nope.

Your first example (multiple assignment) already has clearly defined semantics, so Lua would need an addition operator/keyword/something to indicate a desire for different semantics (repeating the last r-value). It doesn't.

Your second example (chaining together assignments, ala C) requires assignments to be expressions, whereas in Lua they are statements.

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The closest you could get would be defining a function that pushes a value onto the stack a bunch of times:

function push(x)
    return x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x
end

Then you could say:

a,b,c,d,e,f,g = push(t)

But that's pretty kludgey.

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Out of curiosity, why do you need a bunch of different references to the same table in the same scope?