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

[Paul Hsieh <qed@...>]

> >    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.
> 
> That appears to do it!

Actually, now that I've thought about both a little more carefully, I realize, that 
the LISP version is actually somewhat faster, since it does not need to *REPARSE* 
the "macros" from scratch; they have already been at least tokenized before 
execution time.  So its the same power, but somewhat slower in Lua.

I don't know that there is much demand for a faster "meta-execution" interface, but 
is exposing chunks as just another tagged type and in fact exposing the *byte code 
compiler* functions a plausible alternative?

Speaking of speed, I noticed that on the Lua quotes page there are a lot of claims 
about the fact that Lua is "fast".  From the architecture of the language I am 
somewhat skeptical of this.  So my question is, has the speed of Lua been really 
characterized in a tangible way?  Is it really faster than Scheme??  My impression 
was that Scheme can use a C compiler for a back-end, so I am not sure how Lua is 
supposed to compete with that.


--
Paul Hsieh
qed@pobox.com