Evaluating expression in Lua in an Environment - lua

Question

This question has some reference to the question Evaluating expression in Lua in Mathematics Environment
The following code works.
tbl = {}
tbl.sin = math.sin
tbl.cos = math.cos
function mathEval(exp)
return load("return " .. exp, exp, "t", tbl)()
end
print(mathEval("sin(0)"))
print(mathEval("sin(0)+cos(1)+2^2"))
However, the following code does not work.
tbl = {}
tbl.sin = math.sin
tbl.cos = math.cos
function mathEval(exp)
return load("return " .. tostring(exp), tostring(exp), "t", tbl)()
end
print(mathEval(sin(0)))
print(mathEval(sin(0)+cos(1)+2^2))
I want to evaluate expressions without using quotes. How can that be done?

Answer 1

The problem with the line print(mathEval(sin(0)+cos(1)+2^2)) is that the argument of mathEval is evaluated before mathEval runs, so evaluating the variables sin and cos can not be deferred to the environment of mathEval; that is, mathEval gets a value, and no expression to evaluate at all!
First of all, one option to evaluate such mathematical expressions without the use of mathEval would be to simply temporarily change your environment:
local prev_env = _ENV -- this is needed to restore the environment later on
_ENV = tbl -- enter custom environment
local result = sin(0)+cos(1)+2^2
_ENV = prev_env -- restore environment
print(result)
if you want mathEval as a convenience helper, you'll have to pass the expression as a function returning the value to the expression such that calling the function will evaluate the expression; this allows you to defer the initialization. You'll have to use a powerful function called setfenv which allows you to change the environment of func; this was unfortunately removed in favor of _ENV in Lua 5.2 and later. The code then becomes trivial:
local function mathEval(func)
setfenv(func, tbl)
return func
end
mathEval(function() return sin(0)+cos(1)+2^2 end)
setfenv can be replicated in Lua 5.2 using the debug library, since Lua internally implements _ENV as an upvalue, as shown by Leafo:
local function setfenv(fn, env)
local i = 1
while true do
local name = debug.getupvalue(fn, i)
if name == "_ENV" then
debug.upvaluejoin(fn, i, (function()
return env
end), 1)
break
elseif not name then
break
end
i = i + 1
end
return fn
end

Answer 2

I assume you do not want to evaluate the expression before passing the result as an argument? Then you could wrap your expression into a function, which is then lazily called. It replaces the environment with tbl, executes the function, and reverts the environment.
tbl = {}
tbl.sin = math.sin
tbl.cos = math.cos
function mathEval(func)
local old = _ENV
_ENV = tbl
local r = func()
_ENV = old
return r
end
print(mathEval(function() return sin(0)+cos(1)+2^2 end))

Answer 3

You are passing sin(0) and sin(0)+cos(1)+2^2 to the mathEval(exp) function, but since sin and cos are not global variables and the math library is not being passed as an environment, Lua is unable to find them.
If you want to use math functions with the mathEval function, you can use the tbl table created before, to call the math functions, for example:
print(mathEval("tbl.sin(0)"))
print(mathEval("tbl.sin(0)+tbl.cos(1)+2^2"))
or alternatively you can pass the math library or the math functions as an upvalue to the load() function:
function mathEval(exp)
return load("return " .. tostring(exp), tostring(exp), "t", _ENV)()
end
print(mathEval("math.sin(0)"))
print(mathEval("math.sin(0)+math.cos(1)+2^2"))
It is possible to do this without quotes, this should work:
expression = string.format("%s(%d)", "math.sin", 0)
fn = load( "return " .. expression)
result = fn()
print(result) -- Output: 0
In this example, the string.format() function is used to create the string "math.sin(0)". The resulting string is then passed to the load() function as before.
In this way you don't need to use quotes on the string, and you can use placeholders to concatenate the variables.