From: wfaxon@... (Walter Faxon)
Date: 2002-06-14T15:47:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Q. Minimal Ruby

Emiel van de Laar <emiel@il.fontys.nl> wrote in message news:<20020611150030.GA14490@il.fontys.nl>...
> * Alan McFarlane (amcfarlane@mail.hotchilli.com) wrote:
> > Hi
> > 
> > Would it be possible to create a 'minimal' Ruby, that can be embedded into
> > an application by removing support for dynamic loading of libraries, all
> > operating system specific code, and just leaving the basic classes?
> > 
> > The aim is to create a secure, small, and totally machine independant
> > embedded scripting engine within the application, that will be called upon
> > frequently to perform simple tasks with some basic cooperation between Ruby
> > and C.
> 
> Although I've never used it, Ferite might be what you are looking for.
> 
> http://www.ferite.org
> 
> Emiel

Lua might do, too. (I haven't used it, either.)  It doesn't have the
power of Ruby, but it's fairly-well debugged by now.  From the home
page:

http://www.lua.org

"Lua is a powerful light-weight programming language designed for
extending applications. Lua is also frequently used as a
general-purpose, stand-alone language. Lua is free software."

There's a front-end translator that compiles your Lua program into
byte-codes executed by an interpreter.  Your C program can link in
everything, or if you want, just the byte-codes and the interpreter
for a smaller footprint.  Some game developers are using it.

-- Walter