> Awk fit this. So did D, actually. Lua certainly does.
I do like awk and it definitely should be used more, but I stopped using it because of modules. gawk added it, but its strange having a script end in .awk and then its actually .gawk, and not working with mawk and so on.
So to me, modules are paramount, Lua focuses on embeddability and being an extension language means that writing to _G is fine. But as a system language you should never write to _G. this means that you may find a module for lua, but in reality its not lua, its a module for a program, usually a game.
Frankly, I think lua should not even be offered in your package manager and instead some sort of wrapper that works on POSIX systems should be used, batteries included and sane defaults as well. No more installing luaposix for basic functionality (if bash has it, this should as well). I and you are disparaging bash and claim lua is fast, but at the end of the day, bash has many builtins like test,cd,setenv while lua does not.
Also can D be used as a scripting language? I'm genuinely amazed and would give it a try.
> Why not use it if it's there, it's faster, and you don't need features beyond 5.1?
Sure, but I doubt anybody will need the performance unless of course you do.
FWIW there is a killer feature that I consider essential that everybody needs and that is <close>. I no longer have to worry about closing files, and I could probably use it for something else.
> They're almost regex, they're faster than regex, and for 90% of use cases, you don't need full regex
You may not need full regex (PCRE) but you usually need EREs specifically {} and | are used a whole lot.
> Isn't a table basically just a JavaScript object, where metatables are the prototype object? Sort of, at least...
I'd say JS is a weird language as well.
Mind you, I'm not disparaging lua, I do use it, but these are the foot guns. (Bundling is also a mess)
I do like awk and it definitely should be used more, but I stopped using it because of modules. gawk added it, but its strange having a script end in .awk and then its actually .gawk, and not working with mawk and so on.
So to me, modules are paramount, Lua focuses on embeddability and being an extension language means that writing to _G is fine. But as a system language you should never write to _G. this means that you may find a module for lua, but in reality its not lua, its a module for a program, usually a game.
Frankly, I think lua should not even be offered in your package manager and instead some sort of wrapper that works on POSIX systems should be used, batteries included and sane defaults as well. No more installing luaposix for basic functionality (if bash has it, this should as well). I and you are disparaging bash and claim lua is fast, but at the end of the day, bash has many builtins like test,cd,setenv while lua does not.
Also can D be used as a scripting language? I'm genuinely amazed and would give it a try.
> Why not use it if it's there, it's faster, and you don't need features beyond 5.1?
Sure, but I doubt anybody will need the performance unless of course you do.
FWIW there is a killer feature that I consider essential that everybody needs and that is <close>. I no longer have to worry about closing files, and I could probably use it for something else.
> They're almost regex, they're faster than regex, and for 90% of use cases, you don't need full regex
You may not need full regex (PCRE) but you usually need EREs specifically {} and | are used a whole lot.
> Isn't a table basically just a JavaScript object, where metatables are the prototype object? Sort of, at least...
I'd say JS is a weird language as well.
Mind you, I'm not disparaging lua, I do use it, but these are the foot guns. (Bundling is also a mess)