Text processing in Lua...

[Mike McGonagle <mjmogo@...>]

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone could tell me how "memory" efficient Lua is
for dealing with text processing? I would like to use it as a
scripting language to do some template generation for another
programming language. I guess what I am wondering is if Lua only deals
with "static" strings, is there a point where the amount of memory
used becomes cumbersome to deal with?

I guess I am wondering if there is a way, like in Java, to create a
"StringBuffer" object in lua, so that all these strings do not live
permanently in memory.

Is this really something I should worry about? I ask because I kind of
envision having Lua running for some time while processing various
files? Or should I have these "text processes" run as a call to
os.execute, which would then either create a text file, or return the
finished string to the caller?

Is there something that is written on this topic?

Thanks,

Mike