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Recommend me a scripting language

I’ve been looking around for a scripting language that:

  • has a cli interpreter
  • is a “general purpose” language (yes, awk is touring complete but no way I’m using that except for manipulating text)
  • allows to write in a functional style (ie. it has functions like map, fold, etc and allows to pass functions around as arguments)
  • has a small disk footprint
  • has decent documentation (doesn’t need to be great: I can figure out most things, but I don’t want to have to look at the interpter source code to do so)
  • has a simple/straightforward setup (ideally, it should be a single executable that I can just copy to a remote system, use to run a script and then delete)

Do you know of something that would fit the bill?

Here’s a use case (the one I run into today, but this is a recurring thing for me).

For my homelab I need (well, want) to generate a luhn mod n check digit (it’s for my provisioning scripts to generate synchting device ids from their certificates).

I couldn’t find ready-made utilities for this and I might actually need might a variation of the “official” algorithm (IIUC syncthing had a bug in their initial implementation and decided to run with it).

I don’t have python (or even bash) available in all my systems, and so my goto language for script is usually sh (yes, posix sh), which in all honestly is quite frustrating for manipulating data.

Frederic ,

Quickly came to write “AWK!!!” but yeah… you don’t want its superiority… 😜

RedWizard ,
@RedWizard@hexbear.net avatar

Powershell, yeah I said it!

Toribor ,
@Toribor@corndog.social avatar

Unironically Powershell is great and learning it has propelled me through the last 12 years of my career as a Sysadmin. My biggest complaints with it are generally Windows complaints or due to legacy powershell modules.

Tovervlag ,

Wanted to say this too but it really depends on what you’re using it for.

lord_ryvan ,

Why aren’t python and bash be available in all your systems? Which languages would be?

I would’ve recommended python, otherwise perl or Haskell (maybe Haskell’s too big) or something, but now I’m worried that whatever reason makes python undoable also makes perl etc. undoable

gomp OP ,

Why aren’t python and bash be available in all your systems?

Among others, I run stuff on alpine and openwrt.

I don’t need to run these scripts everywhere (strictly speaking, I don’t need the homlab at all), but I was wondering if there’s something that I can adopt as a default goto solution without having to worry about how each system is packaged/configured.

As for python, I doubt the full version would fit in my router plus as said I don’t want to deal with libraries/virtualenvs/… and (in the future) with which distro comes with python3 vs pyton4 (2 vs 3 was enough). Openwrt does have smaller python packages, but then I would be using different implementations on different systems: again something I’d rather not deal with.

As for perl, it would be small enough, but I find it a bit archaic/esoteric (prejudice, I know), plus again I don’t want to deal with how every distro decides to package the different things (eg. openwrt has some 40+ packages for perl - if I were doing serious development that would be ok, but I don’t want to worry about that for just some scripts).

lord_ryvan ,

Is compiling scripts an option? Aka compiling them in C, C++, Rust, whatever for your router on another machine, and copying and executing those binaries on your router?

mbirth ,

Sounds like you want MicroPython. It’s definitely available on OpenWrt and AlpineLinux and has a very small footprint.

If you don’t like Python, have a look at Lua/luajit.

flubba86 , (edited )

You might be interested in Raku. It is Perl6, or what used to be called Perl6, but it deviated too far away from the original perl and it ended up with a different team of developers than perl 5, so they forked it, changed the name and turned it into a new language.

Shareni ,

if there’s something that I can adopt as a default goto solution without having to worry about how each system is packaged/configured.

Go is probably your best bet. Simple to use, and you can compile it so it runs everywhere

WatTyler ,

Mate, I came on here to post Haskell as a semi-ironic ‘joke’ and it’s included in the top comment. You’ve made my day.

lord_ryvan ,

I mean, it’s a functional programming language and an incredibly good one. But it probably has a far too big footprint for their use-case…

WatTyler ,

Oh, I know. I adore Haskell.

NeoNachtwaechter ,

Only 5 years ago, everybody would be singing and shouting “perl”.

Nowadays it is python that has taken this position (even though Perl is still there and can do so much more).

Shareni ,

More like

20 years ago - perl

10 years ago - python

Nowadays - go

GissaMittJobb ,

I don’t know if it matches your desire for easy install of small disk space, but it might make up for it in other arenas - Ruby is my new-found love when making simple scripts. Being able to mostly emulate the shell integration that bash has by just using backticks to call a shell command is the killer feature in my book.

tiredofsametab ,

Perl or python for things likely to already be there. Maybe ruby or PHP if you must. I used to work in groovy a lot but I think it requires the JVM

als ,

vlang might fit your request pretty nicely. It’s a bit patchy in places but mainly stable and gets pretty frequent updates

fubarx ,

Tried bash, Make, and awk/sed. All hit brick walls. Finally landed on pyinvoke. Two dependencies to install on any new machine. Never had problems. Also, easy to debug and modify as projects evolve.

gomp OP ,

I use just for that usecase - highly recommended

paardendrummer ,
@paardendrummer@todon.eu avatar

@gomp Small footprint? Why not try forth. https://forth-standard.org/

gomp OP ,

I fear I am not enough reverse (or Polish, for that matter) :)

Anyway, I have great esteem for you (if you actually use forth and are not just trolling)

Deckweiss ,

nim-lang.org

gomp OP ,

nim is great, but it is >200mb (plus AFAIK it is compiled… does it also have an interpreter?)

iopq ,

The part where it’s compiled is what makes it have no dependencies to actually execute

Nibodhika ,

Realistically whatever problems you see in python will be there for any other language. Python is the most ubiquitously available thing after bash for a reason.

Also you mentioned provisioning scripts, is that Ansible? If so python is already there, if you mean really just bash scripts I can tell you that does not scale well. Also if you already have some scriptsz what language are they on? Why not write the function there?

Also you’re running syncthing on these machines, I don’t think python is larger than that (but I might be wrong).

gomp OP ,

Also you mentioned provisioning scripts, is that Ansible? If so python is already there, if you mean really just bash scripts I can tell you that does not scale well. Also if you already have some scriptsz what language are they on? Why not write the function there??

Currently it’s mostly nixos, plus a custom thing that generates preconfigured openwrt images that I then deploy manually. I have a mess of other vms and stuff, but I plan to phase out everything and migrate to nixos (except the openwrt stuff, since nixos doesn’t run on mips).

I don’t really need to run this specific synchthing-ID script except on my PC (I do the provisioning from there), but I have written scripts that run on my router (using busybox sh) and I was wondering if there is a “goto” scripting that I can use everywhere.

ZWQbpkzl ,

Elixir checks most of those boxes. If you want a good functional scriptibg language, Elixir soynds like the go to. Some lisp language like guile should also be sufficient, and probably have a lighter footprint.

This requirement stands out though:

has a simple/straightforward setup (ideally, it should be a single executable that I can just copy to a remote system, use to run a script and then delete)

Thats basically what ansible does. If you plan on doing this to multiple machines you should just use ansible. Also how do you plan on ensuring the scripting interpreter is installed on the machines?

gomp OP ,

Elixir is quite big (yeah, it’s certainly smaller than something like java… sorry for not specifying what I mean by “small disk footprint”).

Thats basically what ansible does. Thats basically what ansible does. If you plan on doing this to multiple machines you should just use ansible.

Ansible requires python on the target machine (or a lot of extra-hacky workarounds) so… I could just use python myself :)

BTW getting ansible to do anything besides the very straightforward usecases it was meant for is a huge pain (even a simple if/else is a pain) and it’s also super-slow, so I hate it passionately.

Also how do you plan on ensuring the scripting interpreter is installed on the machines?

Ideally I’d just copy the interpreter over via ssh when needed (or install it via the local package manager, if it’s available as a package)

Lemmchen ,
@Lemmchen@feddit.org avatar

No one has mentioned PHP yet? Man, times really have changed.

x1gma ,

The smallest footprint for an actual scripting probably will be posix sh - since you already have it ready.

A slightly bigger footprint would be Python or Lua.

If you can drop your requirement for actual scripting and are willing to add a compile step, Go and it’s ecosystem is pretty dang powerful and it’s really easy to learn for small automation tasks.

Personally, with the requirement of not adding too much space for runtimes, I’d write it in go. You don’t need a runtime, you can compile it to a really small zero dependency lib and you have clean and readable code that you can extend, test and maintain easily.

combat_brandonism ,

Could use a hipster shell like fish, nushell or elvish. I know the latter two have the functional support you’re looking for.

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