Re: Lua as a "domain specific language"?

[roberto@... (Roberto Ierusalimschy)]

On Thu, Mar 09, 2006 at 07:20:46PM +0100, PA wrote:
> 
> The preface to "Programming in Lua" states that "many people regard Lua 
> not as a language, but as a kit for building domain-specific 
> languages". Fair enough, but what does that mean in practice? What 
> usage of Lua qualifies as "domain specific language"? Does anyone have 
> a concrete example of using Lua for such purpose?

My point is more about the pragmatic than about semantic of the
language.  Any of those uses that you illustrated could classify as a
domain-specific use, provided that the language were being used only for
that specific domain.

For instance, I believe that most people that use CLSQL do not use Lisp
only to access databases; instead, they use CLSQL inside larger Lisp
systems. In contrast, most people that use Lua to configure FarCry
consider Lua as a "FarCry configuration language", and use Lua for
that purpose only.

I guess the developers think like this, too. The guys that put Lua
inside FarCry were not making a 'FarCry interface' for Lua; they
were developing a 'FarCry configuration language'. In contrast,
the developers of CLSQL were not creating a 'database access language',
but a 'database interface' for Lisp.

-- Roberto