## Summary Introduce a form of list comprehension using `n for-in-do` syntax. ## Motivation List comprehensions would bring several benefits and prevent code smell. In Lua you are encouraged to not modify tables during traversal. When traversing a table to exclude all the odd numbers you'd be creating a large statement to get rid of them, with list comprehensions this could be shortened and cleaner. ## Design To solve these problems, I propose a `n for-in-do` expression form that is syntactically similar to a for statement, but lacks terminating `end`. The `n for-in-do` expression must match `` for in do``. A ``if then`` expression might be required. Example: ```lua -- normal local t = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} local onlyEven = {} for i,n in pairs(t) do if n%2 == 0 then table.insert(onlyEven, n) end end -- list comprehensions local t = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} local onlyEven = {n for n in t do if n%2 == 0} ``` ## Drawbacks List comprehensions may be misused. The list comprehensions have similar drawbacks to the if expression drawbacks. https://github.com/Roblox/luau/blob/master/rfcs/syntax-if-expression.md ## Alternatives ### C# ```csharp var list2 = from number in Enumerable.Range(0, 10) select 2*number; ``` ### Rust (using cute) ```rust let vector = c![x, for x in 1..10, if x % 2 == 0]; ``` ### Haskell ```haskell [x * 2 | x <- [0 .. 99], x * x > 3] ``` ### R ```r x <- 0:100 S <- 2 * x[x ^ 2 > 3] ``` ## Function syntax List comprehensions could be implemented as functions with ``table.map`` or ``table.filter`` . ### Examples: #### Perl ```perl my @doubles = map {$_*2} 1..9; ``` #### Rust ```rust let ns: Vec<_> = (0..100).filter(|x| x * x > 3).map(|x| 2 * x).collect(); ```