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digitalmars.D - Integrated Scripting

reply mike parker <mike aldacron.com> writes:
I'm curious if anyone has/is/might be considering implementing an 
integrated scripting language with D. One thing that turns me off about 
existing scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, Lua, Pike and friends 
is that there's a great deal of glue code required.

It would be nice to see something built from the ground up to work with 
D, such that D objects are script objects, and vice versa. Import D 
modules in the script, and script modules in D. I mean, how cool is it 
to just link a lib, write a script and run it without worrying about 
typing in mundane glue code or wrestling with Swig. BeanShell and pnuts 
are examples of this with Java (though I never saw the need for those in 
Java, considering how dymanic class loading is cake).

I've thought about taking Lua (since it's tiny compared to Python), 
porting it to D, and giving it the integration I want. But I know I'm 
not the right man for the job. My knowledge of 
parsers/lexers/interpreters/compilers is limited to a few pages of the 
Dragon book which has been collecting mounds of dust on my shelf.

So before I get in over my head, I thought I'd check if someone more 
experienced than I is thinking the same thing. Anyone?
May 17 2004
next sibling parent Daniel Horn <hellcatv hotmail.com> writes:
it would be nice if the scripting language had the same syntax pretty 
similar to D...in fact couldn't the compiler just compile a copy of 
itself into its' dynamic loading system
then compile fed-in d source code to the compiler then the module loader...
that would be really nice--no glue of any kind would be needed and 
regular users could immediately edit models without rebuilding libs and 
getting the build path and env all setup.


mike parker wrote:

 I'm curious if anyone has/is/might be considering implementing an 
 integrated scripting language with D. One thing that turns me off about 
 existing scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, Lua, Pike and friends 
 is that there's a great deal of glue code required.
 
 It would be nice to see something built from the ground up to work with 
 D, such that D objects are script objects, and vice versa. Import D 
 modules in the script, and script modules in D. I mean, how cool is it 
 to just link a lib, write a script and run it without worrying about 
 typing in mundane glue code or wrestling with Swig. BeanShell and pnuts 
 are examples of this with Java (though I never saw the need for those in 
 Java, considering how dymanic class loading is cake).
 
 I've thought about taking Lua (since it's tiny compared to Python), 
 porting it to D, and giving it the integration I want. But I know I'm 
 not the right man for the job. My knowledge of 
 parsers/lexers/interpreters/compilers is limited to a few pages of the 
 Dragon book which has been collecting mounds of dust on my shelf.
 
 So before I get in over my head, I thought I'd check if someone more 
 experienced than I is thinking the same thing. Anyone?
May 17 2004
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrew <Andrew_member pathlink.com> writes:
In article <c8b5t4$qvu$1 digitaldaemon.com>, mike parker says...

I'm curious if anyone has/is/might be considering implementing an 
integrated scripting language with D. One thing that turns me off about 
existing scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, Lua, Pike and friends 
is that there's a great deal of glue code required.

It would be nice to see something built from the ground up to work with 
D, such that D objects are script objects, and vice versa. Import D 
modules in the script, and script modules in D. I mean, how cool is it 
to just link a lib, write a script and run it without worrying about 
typing in mundane glue code or wrestling with Swig. BeanShell and pnuts 
are examples of this with Java (though I never saw the need for those in 
Java, considering how dymanic class loading is cake).

I've thought about taking Lua (since it's tiny compared to Python), 
porting it to D, and giving it the integration I want. But I know I'm 
not the right man for the job. My knowledge of 
parsers/lexers/interpreters/compilers is limited to a few pages of the 
Dragon book which has been collecting mounds of dust on my shelf.

So before I get in over my head, I thought I'd check if someone more 
experienced than I is thinking the same thing. Anyone?


Don't know but this might be of interest to you:

http://www.digitalmars.com/dscript/index.html

It might not be exactly what you are looking for. Unfortunately, I've never used
it so I couldn't comment on it.

Andrew
May 17 2004
parent reply Mike Parker <aldacron71 yahoo.com> writes:
Andrew wrote:

 In article <c8b5t4$qvu$1 digitaldaemon.com>, mike parker says...
 

I'm curious if anyone has/is/might be considering implementing an 
integrated scripting language with D. One thing that turns me off about 
existing scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, Lua, Pike and friends 
is that there's a great deal of glue code required.

It would be nice to see something built from the ground up to work with 
D, such that D objects are script objects, and vice versa. Import D 
modules in the script, and script modules in D. I mean, how cool is it 
to just link a lib, write a script and run it without worrying about 
typing in mundane glue code or wrestling with Swig. BeanShell and pnuts 
are examples of this with Java (though I never saw the need for those in 
Java, considering how dymanic class loading is cake).

I've thought about taking Lua (since it's tiny compared to Python), 
porting it to D, and giving it the integration I want. But I know I'm 
not the right man for the job. My knowledge of 
parsers/lexers/interpreters/compilers is limited to a few pages of the 
Dragon book which has been collecting mounds of dust on my shelf.

So before I get in over my head, I thought I'd check if someone more 
experienced than I is thinking the same thing. Anyone?


 
 
 Don't know but this might be of interest to you:
 
 http://www.digitalmars.com/dscript/index.html
 
 It might not be exactly what you are looking for. Unfortunately, I've never
used
 it so I couldn't comment on it.


Yeah I checked it out before. It's Walter's ECMA implementation. You can 
set it up to replace JScript for Windows scripting. But to get it into 
an app AFICS is no different than using other ECMA implementations, such 
as Rhino.
May 18 2004
parent reply Brian Hammond <d at brianhammond dot com> <Brian_member pathlink.com> writes:
One of the more popular scripting languages for embedding is Lua
(http://www.lua.org).  I have "ported" the C headers for Lua 5.0 for use from D.
However, as has been stated, there's still a lot of glue code required to
register functions, data structures, etc from D to Lua.  

It would be really nice to aid in generating the glue code, possibly to the
point of having it "integrated" by automation.

A tool called tolua exists that aids in generating the glue code required to
interface C/C++ code to Lua, much like SWIG.

Distribution:
http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/~celes/tolua/

Docs:
http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/~celes/tolua/tolua-3.2.html

A first step would be to branch/patch tolua to generate _D_ based glue code.  I
am new to both D and Lua (a few months each) so I am asking for someone more
experienced in either/both.  

AFAIK the parser for the "cleaned" C/C++ headers passed to tolua is written
itself in Lua and is simply based on a lot of regular expressions.  These
regex's recognize C/C++ language features such as typedefs, functions, etc.

Once this is completed, I can think of 2 options to make this "integrated":

1) Manually create "cleaned" D sources for passing to tolua (should we call it
tolua-d? :).  run tolua-d as a custom build step.  I don't like this as it's
easy for the normal/cleaned versions to get out of sync.

2) Have the compiler (DMD, GDC) automatically create cleaned D code, run it
through tolua-d, and add the generated D glue code to the list of D files to
compile and link.  Nothing would be out of sync using this method but it does
tie the scripting language to Lua... Perhaps it could be extensible via compiler
plugins?

Thoughts?
Brian

In article <c8de9q$1ekm$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Mike Parker says...

Andrew wrote:

 In article <c8b5t4$qvu$1 digitaldaemon.com>, mike parker says...
 

I'm curious if anyone has/is/might be considering implementing an 
integrated scripting language with D. One thing that turns me off about 
existing scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, Lua, Pike and friends 
is that there's a great deal of glue code required.

It would be nice to see something built from the ground up to work with 
D, such that D objects are script objects, and vice versa. Import D 
modules in the script, and script modules in D. I mean, how cool is it 
to just link a lib, write a script and run it without worrying about 
typing in mundane glue code or wrestling with Swig. BeanShell and pnuts 
are examples of this with Java (though I never saw the need for those in 
Java, considering how dymanic class loading is cake).

I've thought about taking Lua (since it's tiny compared to Python), 
porting it to D, and giving it the integration I want. But I know I'm 
not the right man for the job. My knowledge of 
parsers/lexers/interpreters/compilers is limited to a few pages of the 
Dragon book which has been collecting mounds of dust on my shelf.

So before I get in over my head, I thought I'd check if someone more 
experienced than I is thinking the same thing. Anyone?


 
 
 Don't know but this might be of interest to you:
 
 http://www.digitalmars.com/dscript/index.html
 
 It might not be exactly what you are looking for. Unfortunately, I've never
used
 it so I couldn't comment on it.


Yeah I checked it out before. It's Walter's ECMA implementation. You can 
set it up to replace JScript for Windows scripting. But to get it into 
an app AFICS is no different than using other ECMA implementations, such 
as Rhino.
May 21 2004
parent reply Brian Hammond <d at brianhammond dot com> <Brian_member pathlink.com> writes:
I don't use DIDE (yet?) but I noticed just now that it has Lua scripting
built-in.  Would you care to share how you've created the D-Lua bindings for
internal DIDE features?  Manually?

Thanks,
Brian

In article <c8l5lv$5qb$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Brian Hammond <d at brianhammond
dot com> says...

One of the more popular scripting languages for embedding is Lua
(http://www.lua.org).  I have "ported" the C headers for Lua 5.0 for use from D.
However, as has been stated, there's still a lot of glue code required to
register functions, data structures, etc from D to Lua.  

It would be really nice to aid in generating the glue code, possibly to the
point of having it "integrated" by automation.

A tool called tolua exists that aids in generating the glue code required to
interface C/C++ code to Lua, much like SWIG.

Distribution:
http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/~celes/tolua/

Docs:
http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/~celes/tolua/tolua-3.2.html

A first step would be to branch/patch tolua to generate _D_ based glue code.  I
am new to both D and Lua (a few months each) so I am asking for someone more
experienced in either/both.  

AFAIK the parser for the "cleaned" C/C++ headers passed to tolua is written
itself in Lua and is simply based on a lot of regular expressions.  These
regex's recognize C/C++ language features such as typedefs, functions, etc.

Once this is completed, I can think of 2 options to make this "integrated":

1) Manually create "cleaned" D sources for passing to tolua (should we call it
tolua-d? :).  run tolua-d as a custom build step.  I don't like this as it's
easy for the normal/cleaned versions to get out of sync.

2) Have the compiler (DMD, GDC) automatically create cleaned D code, run it
through tolua-d, and add the generated D glue code to the list of D files to
compile and link.  Nothing would be out of sync using this method but it does
tie the scripting language to Lua... Perhaps it could be extensible via compiler
plugins?

Thoughts?
Brian

In article <c8de9q$1ekm$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Mike Parker says...

Andrew wrote:

 In article <c8b5t4$qvu$1 digitaldaemon.com>, mike parker says...
 

I'm curious if anyone has/is/might be considering implementing an 
integrated scripting language with D. One thing that turns me off about 
existing scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, Lua, Pike and friends 
is that there's a great deal of glue code required.

It would be nice to see something built from the ground up to work with 
D, such that D objects are script objects, and vice versa. Import D 
modules in the script, and script modules in D. I mean, how cool is it 
to just link a lib, write a script and run it without worrying about 
typing in mundane glue code or wrestling with Swig. BeanShell and pnuts 
are examples of this with Java (though I never saw the need for those in 
Java, considering how dymanic class loading is cake).

I've thought about taking Lua (since it's tiny compared to Python), 
porting it to D, and giving it the integration I want. But I know I'm 
not the right man for the job. My knowledge of 
parsers/lexers/interpreters/compilers is limited to a few pages of the 
Dragon book which has been collecting mounds of dust on my shelf.

So before I get in over my head, I thought I'd check if someone more 
experienced than I is thinking the same thing. Anyone?


 
 
 Don't know but this might be of interest to you:
 
 http://www.digitalmars.com/dscript/index.html
 
 It might not be exactly what you are looking for. Unfortunately, I've never
used
 it so I couldn't comment on it.


Yeah I checked it out before. It's Walter's ECMA implementation. You can 
set it up to replace JScript for Windows scripting. But to get it into 
an app AFICS is no different than using other ECMA implementations, such 
as Rhino.
May 21 2004
parent reply J Anderson <REMOVEanderson badmama.com.au> writes:
Brian Hammond <d at brianhammond dot com> wrote:


I don't use DIDE (yet?) but I noticed just now that it has Lua scripting
built-in.  Would you care to share how you've created the D-Lua bindings for
internal DIDE features?  Manually?

Thanks,
Brian

  


DIDE is programmed in C++.  Therefore there are no D-Lua bindings.  C 
did it the same as any other lua programmer would, using to-lua.  Leds 
is a D editor programmed in D.

-- 
-Anderson: http://badmama.com.au/~anderson/
May 21 2004
parent Brian Hammond <d at brianhammond dot com> <Brian_member pathlink.com> writes:
DIDE is programmed in C++.  Therefore there are no D-Lua bindings.  C 
did it the same as any other lua programmer would, using to-lua.  Leds 
is a D editor programmed in D.


Oh, I made the incorrect assumption it was programmed in D. Using tolua then
makes sense for your C++ code of course.

Thanks, Brian
May 21 2004
prev sibling next sibling parent Billy Zelsnack <billy_zelsnack yahoo.com> writes:
I don't think an official scripting language is a good plan, but I do 
think making the process as painless as possible for existing scripting 
languages would be a good idea.

Boost Python is pretty nice, but compile times really kill it. Exposing 
this and that soon turns into exposing everything.

When it comes down to it, you generally end up doing lots of sets, gets, 
and calls by name. You can already switch on strings and that cleans 
things up dramatically. Maybe if there were default operator overloads 
with names.

class Foo
{
   float _x;
   int _y;

//compiler would generate something like this
void opIndex(char[] memberName,Object obj)
{
   switch(memberName)
   {
     case "_x":{_x=to_float(obj);break;}
     case "_y":{_y=to_int(obj);break;}
     default:{super.opIndex(memberName,obj);break;}
   }
}

}

Of course you could do that manually too.

Dunno. Just an idea.



mike parker wrote:

 I'm curious if anyone has/is/might be considering implementing an 
 integrated scripting language with D. One thing that turns me off about 
 existing scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, Lua, Pike and friends 
 is that there's a great deal of glue code required.
 
 It would be nice to see something built from the ground up to work with 
 D, such that D objects are script objects, and vice versa. Import D 
 modules in the script, and script modules in D. I mean, how cool is it 
 to just link a lib, write a script and run it without worrying about 
 typing in mundane glue code or wrestling with Swig. BeanShell and pnuts 
 are examples of this with Java (though I never saw the need for those in 
 Java, considering how dymanic class loading is cake).
 
 I've thought about taking Lua (since it's tiny compared to Python), 
 porting it to D, and giving it the integration I want. But I know I'm 
 not the right man for the job. My knowledge of 
 parsers/lexers/interpreters/compilers is limited to a few pages of the 
 Dragon book which has been collecting mounds of dust on my shelf.
 
 So before I get in over my head, I thought I'd check if someone more 
 experienced than I is thinking the same thing. Anyone?
May 17 2004
prev sibling parent reply "Tu Nam" <dreamweaver mail15.com> writes:
Sorry I have awrong place reply . Please delete all my post in this thread
"Tu Nam" <dreamweaver mail15.com> wrote in message
news:c8cr7g$bjf$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Please correct me if i wrong , when I first read it , it seems a callback
 alternative technique .
 Well I read in D docs that it has "delegate" if my mind is not wrong , and

 pattern for each event we need to handle .
 But I'm still reading the "signal and slot" from Qt again to explore more


.

 "mike parker" <mike aldacron.com> wrote in message
 news:c8b5t4$qvu$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 I'm curious if anyone has/is/might be considering implementing an
 integrated scripting language with D. One thing that turns me off about
 existing scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, Lua, Pike and friends
 is that there's a great deal of glue code required.

 It would be nice to see something built from the ground up to work with
 D, such that D objects are script objects, and vice versa. Import D
 modules in the script, and script modules in D. I mean, how cool is it
 to just link a lib, write a script and run it without worrying about
 typing in mundane glue code or wrestling with Swig. BeanShell and pnuts
 are examples of this with Java (though I never saw the need for those in
 Java, considering how dymanic class loading is cake).

 I've thought about taking Lua (since it's tiny compared to Python),
 porting it to D, and giving it the integration I want. But I know I'm
 not the right man for the job. My knowledge of
 parsers/lexers/interpreters/compilers is limited to a few pages of the
 Dragon book which has been collecting mounds of dust on my shelf.

 So before I get in over my head, I thought I'd check if someone more
 experienced than I is thinking the same thing. Anyone?
May 18 2004
parent J Anderson <REMOVEanderson badmama.com.au> writes:
Tu Nam wrote:


Sorry I have awrong place reply . Please delete all my post in this thread
  


You can do it yourself if your using a newsreader like mozilla.

-- 
-Anderson: http://badmama.com.au/~anderson/
May 18 2004