This is something I don't see a lot of people do. I've tended to do

  for long,list,of,variables,here
  in ageneratorhere(bigparameterhere)
  do
  end

and

  local x do
    -- everything after is just here to define x
  end

I'm still a little irked it works so well, the only alternative would be for the language to have labeled blocks. but that might be too terse

Agreed, it keeps the parser fast as well because it is a lot more clear when the boolean statement ends and the code block begins. You either need parentheses, `then` or brackets around the block to make parsing clearly defined.