Re: Thought experiment: what would you remove from Lua

[Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@...>]

2018-08-01 0:16 GMT+02:00 Dibyendu Majumdar <mobile@majumdar.org.uk>:

> Are there features in Lua that could be removed to create a simpler language?

Of course there are. It has been done, too. Many times.

One such language is Lua 1.0 — I have it on my machine.

Features that it does not have:

1. An interactive interpreter.

$ lua1.0
usage: lua filename [functionnames]

2. Documentation

"There is no documentation, except the test programs. The manual for Lua 1.1
probably works for this version as well."

There is an 11-page research paper [1] called "The design and implementation
of a language for extending applications". It is worth reading even now.

[1] https://www.lua.org/semish94.html