Lua vs Python?

[fahl@... (Mike Fahl)]

I'm investigating scripting languages, and both Lua and Python seem to
potentially fit the bill more or less. They have many things in common.
Both appear to be "free" (including commercial use), more or less object
oriented, extensible, embeddable, byte-code interpreted, etc.

Python appears to have better support for some OO concepts, (eg multiple
inheritance and class data members). I seems to support multithreading
on some platforms. The strict reference-counting memory management
scheme seem to be more "time-predictable" than the mark-and-sweep method
used in Lua. Python also appears to be a more widely supported and used
language.

Lua has tag methods, which seem to make it easier to layer it on top of
existing "legacy" objects, while still being able to access those
objects almost as if they were part of the language. OTOH, adding
support for multi-threading seems to be non-trivial, and hits from the
GC could be an issue in rea-time applications.

Any opinions or comparisions of these two languages would be greatly
appreciated.

Mike Fahl