Re: Grokking the Virtual Machine

[Peter Kümmel <syntheticpp@...>]

Hypertext Matters wrote:
> I am the new Javascript columnist for hotscripts.com's email newsletter, 
> with a monthly circulation of 2/3 million. I am using my second month's 
> article for a little Lua evangelism. The following is my proposed 
> article which I have to submit in the next couple of days; it must be 
> 100-150 words and I'm near the very top already, so there won't be much 
> I can add, though I could change things depending on feedback.
>
> Thanks in advance, article follows:
> ******************************************************************************* 
>
>
> GROKKING THE VIRTUAL MACHINE: This month we consider not Javascript, but 
> it's syntactic cousin, Lua:
>
> a = {}
> a["b"] = "c"
>
> This code is valid in both Lua and Javascript; the first line creates a 
> Javascript "associative array", or in Lua, a "table". In both languages 
> these constructs serve as "objects", so both of the following are valid 
> statements for retrieving the "b" property of "a":
>
> a["b"]
> a.b
>
> Other similarities include that functions are first-class values in both 
> languages: they can be stored in variables, passed as arguments, and 
> returned as results. Furthermore, both languages support "lexical 
> closures", which allow "data hiding" (see last month's column).
>
> Lua may well be the lowest-level of the C-based scripting languages: it 
> is a "register-based" virtual machine, and has some hooks directly into 
> C. It is popular both in Brazil where it originated, and with game 
> programmers. Look into Lua, and become a better Javascript programmer!

It's designed for embedding ( http://www.lua.org/pil/p1.html ):

"Lua was designed, from the beginning,
to be integrated with software written
in C and other conventional languages."

Peter