[myrmidon]

If you insinuate that %q obviates the need for ldump then you are wrong.

There is not even significant overlap in what they do; all that %q does is sufficiently escape Lua strings so the interpreter can read them back. It does not serialize functions nor even tables in any shape or form.

edit: Sorry for being unreasonably harsh after misunderstanding your message.

[girvel]

I actually thought the comment was about ldump implementation: it uses %q to serialize strings, and it may not be a reliable way.