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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.

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.

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.

bastion ,

Micropython.

davel , (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

That does seem to be just one, maybe two small files, and no dependencies. And a built in map() function.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

perl might be on all your systems. It’s kind-of a legacy, but still actively developed. It’s not a great language: it looks like bash scripting on steroids. But if you just need to write some small scripts with a language more powerful than awk or bash, it does the job. If perl isn’t on all of your systems already, then I would choose a better scripting language.

Findmysec ,

TBH I don’t even use awk that much, even that is plenty powerful for my needs. Perl absolutely blows my mind with how needlessly complex I can make stuff with it

silasmariner ,

Everyone always dunkin’ on Perl, but I can’t even tell you how often it’s been the best tool for the job. Like, at least 3

wargreymon ,

guile scheme or Julia

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Neither of them seem to be a single file, and both seem to have several dependencies, at least that’s the case with the Homebrew versions.

Penta ,

Maybe something like Elvish or Nushell could be worth a look. They have a lot of similarities to classic shells like bash, but an improved syntax and more powerful features. Basically something in between bash and Python. Not sure about disk footprint or general availability/portability though

explore_broaden ,

A scripting language written in Rust would certainly fulfill you requirement of only needing to copy one file since they are always statically linked and you can even statically compile against musl so it will work on any Linux system without needing a correct libc. Maybe check out rhai.

bruce965 , (edited )
@bruce965@lemmy.ml avatar

JavaScript through Node.js, or TypeScript through Deno if you like typed languages. They both check all your boxes (just check the size of the executables to make sure that it’s what you would consider “small footprint”).

Both languages and runtimes are quite popular, so you will find any answers on StackOverflow.

They are both single-executable with little dependencies, and Deno can also compile your scripts to self-contained executables.

As a bonus, both support the vast and extensive NPM package repository where you can find all sort of libraries for even the most complex tasks.

And they work with your favourite IDE or editor, not just syntax highlighting, but also contextual suggestions.

gomp OP ,

Installing node uses some 60MB (according to zypper on my current desktop). I’d rather have something small and possibly that consists of a single executable.

As a bonus, both support the vast and extensive NPM package repository

That’s not necessarily a feature :) Package repos are great if you are a developer (I am one) working primarily with that language, but are frustrating if you just want to run things.

bruce965 ,
@bruce965@lemmy.ml avatar

I thought so, although almost nothing for modern standards, 60MB is not exactly tiny. Sorry about that.

On a different note, a repository is always a good thing imho. If you’d rather not have to worry about the dependency-pull step you can always include the dependencies with your sources, or just limit your code to using features included with the runtime.

Evilsandwichman ,

English

gomp OP ,

Let alone the reliability, I somehow doubt my router would be able to run an LLM :)

DrFriendless ,
@DrFriendless@aus.social avatar

@gomp I like TypeScript.

I used Python for 15 years or so until they changed from v2 to v3. At that point I realised I couldn't understand my old code because it lacked types, so I got discouraged with that. So rather than learn v3 I stopped using it.

Perl is a disaster. sh is good for shell scripts but let's not stretch it.

TypeScript can use all the JS libraries and runs on node which is supported by all sorts of platforms. Yes there are a few holes in the type safety, so don't do that.

The internet is full of "how to do X in JS". You can read them and add the types you need.

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.

gravitas_deficiency ,

Bro seriously just slap pyenv + pyenv-virtualenv on your systems and you’re good to go. They’re absolutely trivial to install. Iirc the latter is not a thing in windows, but if you’re stuck on windows for some reason and doing any serious scripting, you should be using WSL anyways.

skullgiver ,
@skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl avatar

As for languages intended to be run as a script first and foremost, consider powershell. It’s object oriented (and not, like other script languages, just serialising/deserialising everything to JSON under the hood). The syntax takes some time getting used to, but it’s cross-platform, quite powerful, and has very good editor support.

Something I haven’t seen here yet, but may be worth considering: several programming languages support invoking the compiler to run a source file rather than compile it into a binary.

Go may be worth trying as a Python replacement. It’s strictly a programming language, but the language has been written to make it fast to compile. For simple scripts, there’s not much difference between the startup time for Python and a compiler invocation of Go.

If you want a more functional programming, Kotlinscript may be to your liking (though that comes with a rather large JVM+compiler dependency that’s not very portable). Kotlinscript is basically Kotlin (the programming language) executed like a script by putting the Kotlin compiler in the hashbang.

Similarly, Java can these days also be executed like a script if you invoke it as java some-script.java. Using Java like this doesn’t allow for importing dependencies, though, which you may want if you ever need to process JSON.

These compilers aren’t single binaries, but they are available as normal OS packages on most modern distros.

If you want to optimisme for “I want to copy a statically linked file to an alpine container”, maybe look into fish or zsh.

For some types of data manipulation, PHP may be a good fit. It’s not just for web development, although many of its more optimised features are designed for that. Useful features include clear iterations over maps/dictionaries, quite strong static types it you bother to put them in the script, and lots of examples of how to accomplish something online.

Typescript can also be invoked directly these days, and it’s even better than PHP (and arguably most programming languages) when it comes to types. I find the time it takes for the JS VM to initialise frustrating, but maybe more modern interpreters such as deno do better in this regard.

atzanteol ,

Kotlin script is fantastic! I wish it would become more popular. Dependency support, cached complier output, etc. I really like it for non-trivial scripting since you didn’t need a venv for dependencies.

OP is being ridiculous about space requirements. 60MB is a rounding error these days.

Findmysec ,

Perl would be my candidate for more advanced text handling than what sh can do.

Never used Lua but I think it’s fun.

If nothing else works, just learn C/Rust. There’s plenty of that on Linux systems, I think you’ll be able to manage. Yes, it doesn’t meet a lot of your requirements.

jbloggs777 ,

It is possible to wrap something like python into a single file, which is extracted (using standard shell tools) into a tmpdir at runtime.

You might also consider languages that can compile to static binaries - something like nim (python like syntax), although you could also make use of nimscript. Imagine nimscript as your own extensible interpreter.

Similarly, golang has some extensible scripting languages like github.com/traefik/yaegi - go has the advantage of easy cross compiling if you need to support different machine architectures.

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