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.

  • @NeoNachtwaechter
    12•3 months ago

    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).

        • davel [he/him]English
          2•3 months ago

          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.

          • Possibly linuxEnglish
            2•3 months ago

            The one thing Go does have going for is performance. It compiles and runs pretty fast. It isn’t as fast as C but it is very close.

      • @maniiiEnglish
        1•3 months ago

        Even after using CPAN ? I found Perl to be much more “manageable” than Python.

        Python with Venv and Pip at least works as expected. Which makes it easier.

        • Possibly linuxEnglish
          1•3 months ago

          Python has a clean syntax and is popular. I can’t say the same for Perl. Also I’m not sure if Perl is cross platform.

    • davel [he/him]English
      1•3 months ago

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