Re: Perl versus other scripting language

On 3/30/07, Rob Dixon <rob.dixon@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Jean-Rene David wrote:
> * Rob Dixon [2007.03.30 08:30]:
>> - You could add Lua to the list. But then remove it - it's awful.
>
> FYI, I have read much harsher comments about perl on the lua mailing
> list.

I'm not surprised. People will always tend to take sides, however
senseless it may be.

> I ignored them at the time and will do the same here, though I
> wouldn't mind hearing more substantive criticisms. That is, if people
> are able to discuss such thing without losing their calm.

My main criticism of Lua is its bizarre generic for construct, which
hides the application of an iterator function and state variable in a
deceptively simple syntax. Apart from that there is only the C-type
for loop.

I also dislike the 'everything is a hash' approach, which could be OK
except that data can have /both/ string and integer indices. And there
is the anomaly that, in the case of sparse arrays, the length operator
can arbitrarily pick any undefined element in a structure and
nominate it as the end (and therefore the size) of the array.

> As far as I can understand, the two languages are not primarily
> targeted at the same kind of application. I'm not an expert in
> either, but neither looks "awful" to me in its own primary
> application domain, though each may be a bit of a stretch in the
> *other's* domain.

It is an embedded language, and needs a host program to be useful. It is
usable as a stand-alone language embedded in a shell program, but that
is not it's primary environment. I only mentioned it as it often comes up
in a discussion with Ruby, Python and Perl.

This thread is relevant on this newsgroup only insofar as it relates to
Perl programming, and I don't really want to say more here for fear of
getting too far off topic. I would, however, welcome a reference for a
Lua mailing list so that I can see the comments for myself.

I didn't understand exactly if the reference you want is about
arguments of Lua developers on Perl or for a Lua mailing list for
itself. Anyway, lua-l is the official mailing list for this language:

http://www.lua.org/lua-l.html (Homepage)
http://bazar2.conectiva.com.br/mailman/listinfo/lua (to join - via
Mailman interface)

Adriano Ferreira

Cheers,

Rob

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