this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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Recommend me a scripting language (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 months ago by gomp@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I've been looking around for a scripting language that:

  • has a cli interpreter
  • is a "general purpose" language (yes, awk is touring complete but no way I'm using that except for manipulating text)
  • allows to write in a functional style (ie. it has functions like map, fold, etc and allows to pass functions around as arguments)
  • has a small disk footprint
  • has decent documentation (doesn't need to be great: I can figure out most things, but I don't want to have to look at the interpter source code to do so)
  • has a simple/straightforward setup (ideally, it should be a single executable that I can just copy to a remote system, use to run a script and then delete)

Do you know of something that would fit the bill?

Here's a use case (the one I run into today, but this is a recurring thing for me).

For my homelab I need (well, want) to generate a luhn mod n check digit (it's for my provisioning scripts to generate synchting device ids from their certificates).

I couldn't find ready-made utilities for this and I might actually need might a variation of the "official" algorithm (IIUC syncthing had a bug in their initial implementation and decided to run with it).

I don't have python (or even bash) available in all my systems, and so my goto language for script is usually sh (yes, posix sh), which in all honestly is quite frustrating for manipulating data.

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[–] Ramin_HAL9001@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I would go with Guile, because it is built-in to the Guix Package Manager which is a really good general-purpose package manager.

It ticks several of your boxes:

  • has a CLI interpreter
  • is a general purpose language, Scheme, amd compliant with revisions 5, 6, and 7 of the language standard
  • allows writing in a functional style (it is one of the original functional programming languages)
  • small disk footprint, but still large enough to be "batteries included"
  • decent documentation, especially if you use Emacs
  • simple setup: not so much, unless you are using Guix to begin with. The standard distribution ships with lots of pre-built bytecode files, you need an installer script to install everything.

It also has pretty good libraries for system maintenance and reporting:

[–] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 2 points 2 months ago

Since you like guile, I would recommend you checkout rash (search "rash shell language" on Google. Sorry too lazy to link it).

It is based on racket, but made to be shell-like, and is very nice. I believe guile used to have a similar project that isn't maintained anymore.