Tcl vs. Lua
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From: Gerard Sookahet on 29 Dec 2005 14:20 Isaac Gouy wrote: > Cameron Laird wrote: > >>In article <1135859377.142907.11560(a)g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, >>Lisa Pearlson <reageer(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >> >>>Coincidentally I came across Lua ( http://lua.org ). >>>Seems their goals, portability, embeddability, extendability, are >>>similar to Tcl. >>>Just like Tcl, I had never heard of Lua, but they claim it to be >>>simple, fast, etc. >>> >>>So, I can't help wonder how Tcl compares to Lua. >>>Does anyone here know Lua? I'm sure each has their strengths and >>>weaknesses. I'm only interested in what are Tcl's advantages over Lua. >>> >>>Lisa >>> >> >>Tcl constitutes a far richer programming environment. >>Lua is more minimal in its run-time impact. >> >>Tcl supports Unicode and regular expressions more fully >>than Lua. >> >>Tcl has Starpacks, stubs, and so on. >> >>Tcl/Tk is ahead of TkLua. >> >>There are more Tcl books. >> >>Some prefer EIAS to the impressive mileage Lua gets out >>of dictionary-based metaprogramming. >> >>Lua's a wonderful language. It also remains a niche >>language. Tcl comes much closer to universality. > > > EIAS? > The famous mantra: Everything Is A String
From: Lisa Pearlson on 29 Dec 2005 17:43 Thank you.. This was very helpful.. it tells me I shouldn't bother with Lua, ... or do I? They say it's used a lot for "Games programming". What makes it suitable for games programming, other than it's cross platform features? Doesn't cross platform usually means it can't take advantage of hardware specifics? The way I heard about Lua was when I was looking for a "Setup Wizard" type program to create installers for my own software, like Install Shield, Wise, etc. I came across one that featured embedded "Lua scripting" to do install operations. But wouldn't TCL be much more suitable for this? I sure thing so. It seems Lua's strengths is smaller footprint and better performance than TCL. And they said it runs on mobile devices too. TCL is too slow for mobile devices, I was told on here. Lua also seems to allow easy integration with C/C++ and extensible.. how is this different from a tcl 'stub' ? One thing that appeals a bit to me about Lua, is that it comes with a 'compiler' that turns script code into bytecode. No such free meal with TCL (though I heard ActiveState has a commercial solution). Lisa "Cameron Laird" <claird(a)lairds.us> wrote in message news:7g4d83-fs9.ln1(a)lairds.us... > In article <1135859377.142907.11560(a)g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, > Lisa Pearlson <reageer(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >>Coincidentally I came across Lua ( http://lua.org ). >>Seems their goals, portability, embeddability, extendability, are >>similar to Tcl. >>Just like Tcl, I had never heard of Lua, but they claim it to be >>simple, fast, etc. >> >>So, I can't help wonder how Tcl compares to Lua. >>Does anyone here know Lua? I'm sure each has their strengths and >>weaknesses. I'm only interested in what are Tcl's advantages over Lua. >> >>Lisa >> > > Tcl constitutes a far richer programming environment. > Lua is more minimal in its run-time impact. > > Tcl supports Unicode and regular expressions more fully > than Lua. > > Tcl has Starpacks, stubs, and so on. > > Tcl/Tk is ahead of TkLua. > > There are more Tcl books. > > Some prefer EIAS to the impressive mileage Lua gets out > of dictionary-based metaprogramming. > > Lua's a wonderful language. It also remains a niche > language. Tcl comes much closer to universality.
From: Cameron Laird on 29 Dec 2005 19:08 In article <43b4665b$0$5074$e4fe514c(a)dreader18.news.xs4all.nl>, Lisa Pearlson <no(a)spam.plz> wrote: . . . >They say it's used a lot for "Games programming". What makes it suitable for >games programming, other than it's cross platform features? Doesn't cross >platform usually means it can't take advantage of hardware specifics? . . . Computing is an immature domain. We're still figuring this stuff out. I don't know enough to figure out whether "'cross-platform' usually means, 'it can't take advantage of hardware specifics'." Lua's popular with gamers 'cause of the small memory footprint, good performance, and absence of $-s in its syntax. Also, it's as easy to interface to C-coded modules as any practical high-level languages, and easier than nearly all.
From: slebetman@yahoo.com on 29 Dec 2005 19:26 Lisa Pearlson wrote: > Thank you.. This was very helpful.. it tells me I shouldn't bother with Lua, > .. or do I? I wouldn't say that since knowledge is often its own benefit. I took a peek and found Lua's concept of "tables" particularly interesting. It's like Tcl's list+array as well as C/C++ struct. Structs is the one thing I miss in Tcl. > They say it's used a lot for "Games programming". So is Tcl, for exactly the same reason. Though Lua have slowly been replacing Tcl. I suspect it's because it's smaller, uses infix notation and doesn't use $ to handle variables (making C programmers more comfortable with it). > Doesn't cross platform usually means it can't take advantage of hardware specifics? No, it only means it is clean C (or ANSI C, or POSIX) code without platform dependencies. Taking advantage of hardware specifics is the job of your C compiler. > The way I heard about Lua was when I was looking for a "Setup Wizard" type > program to create installers for my own software, like Install Shield, Wise, > etc. I came across one that featured embedded "Lua scripting" to do install > operations. > But wouldn't TCL be much more suitable for this? I sure thing so. > I'd think Tcl would be perfect for this since this sort of stuff involves a lot of text processing. > It seems Lua's strengths is smaller footprint and better performance than > TCL. And they said it runs on mobile devices too. TCL is too slow for mobile > devices, I was told on here. > Tcl runs fine on mobile devices - better than Java IMHO since Tcl uses less RAM. The Tcl interpreter is usually the first interpreter to be ported on small platforms. But since Lua is so small, I suspect it uses even less resource than Tcl. But saying Tcl is slow for mobile devices is just plain wrong since the same mobile devices are usually designed to run Java.
From: Donal K. Fellows on 29 Dec 2005 19:26
Isaac Gouy wrote: > EIAS? Everything Is A String, which is the fundamental basis of Tcl's semantic model (stretching back to, oh, the very beginning!) Since 8.0 that's been modified a little bit (to "Everything Looks and Works Like A String") but that's close enough that it's not worth changing the acronym. What does EIAS mean? It means that every value must be representable in a printable way, and every value must be creatable from a string. For simple things (like an integer or a list) it's pretty obvious how that's done, but other cases (especially relating to some extensions) are much harder. Donal. |