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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.

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)

ZWQbpkzl ,

If python is too big for you and you’re dealing with heterogeneous systems then you’re probably stuck with sh as the lowest common denominator between those systems. I’m not aware of any scripting languages that are so portable you can simply install them with one file over scp.

Alternate route is to abandon a scripting interpreter completely and compile a static binary in something like Go and deploy the binary.

There was also some “compile to bash” programming languages that I’ve sneered at because I couldn’t think of a use case but this might be one.

vzq ,

I can’t really think of anything that’s less frustrating than sh and ticks all your boxes. You can try TCL but it’s bound to be a shit show. It was painful to use two decades ago.

Perl is a step up in terms of developer comfort, but it’s at the same time too big and too awkward to use.

Maybe a statically linked Python?

digdilem ,

Perl is a step up in terms of developer comfort, but it’s at the same time too big and too awkward to use.

How do you mean?

It’s already on nearly every distro, so there’s no core size unless you lean into modules. The scripts aren’t exactly big either.

vzq ,

He doesn’t have bash. I’m not sure I’ve seen a system this millennium with Perl but not bash.

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

possiblylinux127 ,

Go isn’t a scripting language

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Go isn’t a scripting language, and it isn’t a system language either, despite what Wikipedia currently says. To be a system language, a language should support assembly language and shouldn’t require an embedded garbage collector. And if you’re going to make a compiled language anyway, why not make it capable of system work? Go is a platypus that’s popular with devops for some reason—probably Google’s clout in the industry.

possiblylinux127 ,

Perl is a pain to work with

Python is a lot less pain

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Why would you say that Perl “can do so much more” than Python? That assertion sounds indefensible.

NeoNachtwaechter ,

LOL It is one of the most well known things about perl that the language is as mighty as probably no other programming language.

en.philosophy.perlzemi.com/…/20190911130832.html

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Right, so you’ve got nothing to back it up. Sure, 1990s, let’s get you back to bed.

cmhe ,

What about Lua/Luajit?

In most scripting languages you have the interpreter binary and the (standard) libraries as separate files. But creating self-extracting executables, that clean up after themselves can easily be done by wrapping them in a shell script.

IMO, if low dependencies and small size is really important, you could also just write your script in a low level compiled language (C, Rust, Zig, …), link it statically (e.g. with musl) and execute that.

slembcke ,

I use Lua for this sort of thing. Not my favorite language, but it works well for it. Easy to build for any system in the last 20-30 years, and probably the next 20 too. The executable is small so you can just redistribute it or stick it in version control.

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)

paardendrummer ,
@paardendrummer@todon.eu avatar

@gomp Well no I know someone who does forth, not me really. Perhaps forth is just too low-level for anything except hardware drivers and so.

nyan ,

Technically, you could bundle a Perl script with the interpreter on another system using pp and run the packed version on systems with no installed Perl, but at that point you might as well just use a compiled language.

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

atzanteol ,

Perl requres the perl interpreter and python requires a python interpreter. Why is it bad that groovy also needs a vm?

digdilem ,

Perl’s core to most distros and will be there already. Python isn’t and can be quite heavy - plus some of are are still smarting over the major version change breaking everything and the need for complicated environments.

atzanteol ,

“heavy”. It’s 2024. We have gigabytes of storage on handheld phones. I don’t buy it.

nyan ,

Last I checked, the JVM was larger than the standard Perl and Python interpreters, and had a much worse startup time (which is bad for short scripts).

savoy ,
@savoy@lemmygrad.ml avatar

There’s always nushell. It’s fairly new, not quite to 1.0 yet (0.96.1 at time of writing), but the constant breaking changes seemed to have stopped. It hits all your points and it’s quite fun to use when writing scripts. Bonus that it’s also pretty much tailor-made to manipulate data.

Aquila ,

Not sure how big node footprint is but would fit the bill. Would only recommend if you wanna go into web dev career in the future tho 🙃

silasmariner ,

If you can, just use Perl. Probably installed on your systems, even the ones without python.

digdilem ,

So often the right answer, perl. It’s a shame that it’s so unfashionable these days.

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.

possiblylinux127 ,

Only good on Windows

digdilem ,

Oh dude, you are so wrong!

Powershell is available for linux and will run the same modules that have made it such a success on Windows. Want to fire up vmware containers or get a list of vms? Want to talk to Exchange servers? Azure? AWX? $large-corporate-thing? Powershell is a very good tool for that, even if it smells very Microsofty.

The linux version works well - it has some quirks (excessive logging, a MS repo that needs manual approving that breaks automatic updates) but aside from those, it just works. I have several multi-year scripts that tick away nicely in the background.

possiblylinux127 ,

Python is what you want. You can install it on just about any system.

Other than that maybe Lua but that will be hell.

digdilem ,

Python is what you want. You can install it on just about any system.

Perl and bash are already there, no need to install anything.

Lemmchen ,
@Lemmchen@feddit.org avatar

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

possiblylinux127 ,

For data processing?

digdilem ,

I used it for scripting a decade after everyone else, but even I have to admit PHP is rarely the best choice now.

digdilem ,

Perl is already installed on most linux machines and unless you start delving into module usage, you won’t need to install anything else.

Python is more fashionable, but needs installing on the host and environments can get complicated. I don’t think it scales as well as Perl, if that’s a concern of yours.

furzegulo ,

i use mostly python and lua.

possiblylinux127 ,

Lua

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