High-level language continuum (was: Ok, ok, there are no bugs ... :o) )

[Pedro Miller Rabinovitch <pedro@...>]

Paul,

  I've read Mr. Graham's article and found it quite enlightening. 
I've waded a bit through the world of LISP, but I'm sure we have 
quite a lot of people in the list who understand fully the language's 
features and might provide us with a better comparison than the one I 
might conceivably furnish.

  However, to try to answer your question: lua programs can execute 
lua code that's built on run-time. Look for dostring(). I'm not sure 
if that's enough to parallel "macro" capability, but my guess would 
be it is.

  I do recommend Paul Graham's article, referenced below, as good 
reading for any programmer -- particularly one that hasn't learned 
any new languages in the last year or so. :)

(BTW: how do you think we could rate 'Befunge' (a bi-directional 
language) in the lattice? And please don't get me started on the 
n-directional variations... ;) )

  Cheers,

     Pedro.

Paul Hsieh wrote:
> One of the reasons I'm looking at Lua right now is that it seems to
> be a language as pure and simple as LISP (only one powerful abstract 
> data type from which all other data types must be derived) however 
> according to the article here:
>
> http://www.paulgraham.com/paulgraham/avg.html
>
> the author claims that the main power of LISP over other languages 
> is its "macro" ability (rewrite code at run time.)
>
> Does lua have a similar capability?  I.e., can you "coerce" a table 
> into a chunk?  I am guessing the answer is no, given that code input 
> is in standard C  strings rather than LUA strings.  Do you think 
> this would be worthwhile feature to have?
--
Pedro Miller Rabinovitch
Gerente Geral de Tecnologia
Cipher Technology
www.cipher.com.br