Lua Versus Go

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Go is a compiled, garbage-collected, concurrent programming language developed by Google Inc. [1]

[Comparativo entre Go e Lua] (Portuguese)

Point-by-Point Comparison:

Philosophy - Go [2] and Lua [3]
Type system - Go supports static typing without inheritance or any relationships between types.
Types - Go has a larger number of builtin types (e.g. integers of various sizes and signedness), whereas Lua code normally just uses the number type (typically floating point). For Lua, see also the [LNUM patch].
Multiple return values - supported by both languages
Strings are immutable in both languages
C/C++ interfacing - Well developed in Lua (BindingCodeToLua). SWIG now supports Go [4].
Concurrency - Lua and Go both support forms of coroutines ("goroutines" in Go). Go has channels, making concurrency safer, and the goroutines can be multiplexed over concurrent threads (see GOMAXPROCS runtime option).
RAII/exceptions - Go's "defer" statement supports execution on scope exit (function not block level) [5]. Lua doesn't natively support it, but see ResourceAcquisitionIsInitialization. Go and Lua don't have a try-catch statement [6], but the pcall function in Lua is analogous, and similarly the panic/recover construct in Go.
Standard library - Go is larger [7] and doesn't limit itself to ANSI C.
Stability - Go is still a work in progress [8]. Lua is a mature language and implementation. See also LuaFiveTwo.
Compilers - Go has two compilers [4]. Lua has LuaImplementations.
Syntax - Go follows C brace and comment syntax closer than Lua though still deviates from C in many ways [9].
Runtime speed - Both Lua and Go emphasize efficiency, especially for the LuaJIT implementation of Lua. Go is readily a compiled language.
Compilation speed - Both Lua and Go emphasize speed of compilation. Go has a novel approach in handling big project trees, resulting in exponential speed gain.
Pointers - Go has pointers but no pointer arithmetic, for safety [10]. Lua has no pointers.
Garbage collection - Both Lua and Go use garbage collection.[11]
Portability - Lua runs anywhere you have an ANSI C compiler. Go runs on unix-style systems and Windows. A Plan 9 port is on it's way.
Go has named result parameters [12] (see also: Multiple Return Values mentioned above).
Go has Python-style slices.

Lua Versus Go

See Also