title: Lua http socket evaluation
body: <p>I use lua 5.1 and the luaSocket 2.0.2-4 to retrieve a page from a web server. I first check if the server is responding and then assign the web server response to lua variables.</p>
  
  <pre><code>local mysocket = require("socket.http")
  if mysocket.request(URL) == nil then
      print('The server is unreachable on:\n'..URL)
      return
  end
  local response, httpCode, header = mysocket.request(URL)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Everything works as expected but the request is executed two times. I wonder if I could do Something like (which doesn't work obviously):</p>
  
  <pre><code>local mysocket = require("socket.http")
  if (local response, httpCode, header = mysocket.request(URL)) == nil then
      print('The server is unreachable on:\n'..URL)
      return
  end
  </code></pre>