I wasn't deeply familiar with python's `with`, so I looked it up[0]

<close> differs from `with` in at least the sense that it doesn't have any equivalent to __enter__ and doesn't create its own block. It creates a local variable whose __close metamethod will be called when it goes out of scope. Since Lua has lexical scope at the block level rather than the function level, this works similarly to the way Python calls __exit__.

These snippets of Python and Lua are roughly equivalent. They both open a file, read one line, and close it, or do nothing if there was some error opening the file.

  try:
    with open("foo.txt") as f:
      print(f.readline())
    # f is now closed.
  except:
    pass

  local f,err = io.open("foo.txt")
  if not err then
    local f <close> = f
    print(f:read("*l"))
  end
  -- f is now closed.

C#'s `using`[1] seems much closer, except that it handles nulls by not trying to close them and lua's <close> does not include any such handling.

[0]: https://docs.python.org/3/reference/compound_stmts.html#the-...

[1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-refe...