Contributed by mbalmer on from the we-really-need-more-languages dept.
The Arena language was designed with the following main features in mind, most of which were added on top of a very C-like core to support better ad-hoc scripting:
- syntax similar to ANSI C
- standard library similar to ANSI C
- automatic memory management
- runtime polymorphism
- support for exceptions
- support for anonymous functions
(lang/arena has been committed to the OpenBSD ports tree.)
(Comments are closed)
By Anonymous Coward (66.11.66.41) on
It has a C style syntax, and is a real full featured scripting language like perl or python. Except it tends to be a little faster than those.
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By Anonymous Coward (68.104.1.58) on
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By Anonymous Coward (66.11.66.41) on
And? Nobody is suggesting adding it to the base system.
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By Anonymous Coward (68.104.1.58) on
>
> And? Nobody is suggesting adding it to the base system.
nope, they aren't. but a BSD license (like arena has), is preferable.
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By Anonymous Coward (70.27.15.123) on
> >
> > And? Nobody is suggesting adding it to the base system.
>
> nope, they aren't. but a BSD license (like arena has), is preferable.
And a full featured general purpose scripting language (like pike is) may be preferable to some.
By Anonymous Coward (69.18.177.10) on
> It has a C style syntax, and is a real full featured scripting language like perl or python. Except it tends to be a little faster than those.
An advantage that arena may have is size; pike is what, 14MB? Arena is only 180k, which might make the descion as well (besides the fact that Arena is more straight C whereas Pike has many powerful, but necessarily useful, features).
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By Anonymous Coward (66.11.66.41) on
> > It has a C style syntax, and is a real full featured scripting language like perl or python. Except it tends to be a little faster than those.
>
> An advantage that arena may have is size; pike is what, 14MB? Arena is only 180k, which might make the descion as well (besides the fact that Arena is more straight C whereas Pike has many powerful, but necessarily useful, features).
The source download of pike is 14MB because it includes dozens of modules, and the autoconf nightmare that comes along with all of them. You don't need to install all that though. It is certainly bigger than arena (the pike binary is ~1.5MB), but as I said, I recommend it if you want a "full featured C-like scripting language". If you want a minimal language, possibly for embedding in a C/C++ app, then arena is probably the way to go. Alot of people are looking to a scripting language for stuff like sysadmin tasks, log file parsing, web development, etc, etc. And for those tasks, pike is a better fit.
By Anonymous Coward (213.113.27.69) on
like, hello?
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By Anonymous Coward (68.104.1.58) on
>
> like, hello?
at least it isn't {python,ruby,io}
By corentin (81.56.152.193) on
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> like, hello?
Hard to port software is obviously much better.
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By Anonymous Coward (128.138.207.49) on
> >
> > like, hello?
>
> Hard to port software is obviously much better.
IMHO, the point is... why is this on undeadly?
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By Anonymous Coward (68.104.1.58) on
By Anonymous Coward (82.94.1.57) on
> >
> > like, hello?
>
> Hard to port software is obviously much better.
<irony>
If the original author writes unportable code it's indeed much better.
</irony>
By Anonymous Coward (69.18.177.10) on
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By Jasper (80.60.145.215) on http://humppa.nl
>
I started with 0.9.1, but there was a bug in the time code of Arena. This occured only on !(i386,sparc64). Neiter the author, nor valgrind catched it at first.
Pascal Schmidt fixed this and released 0.9.2.