Looking for an embeddable scripting language for C++ with 64-bit support and Cross Platform

Question

I'm looking for a scripting language that works on 32-bit and 64-bit machines as well as on Windows and Linux. I will be embedding it into a C++ application so I prefer it to be natively written in C++ rather than C. I also would prefer the script to have thread/asynchronous support.

So far the languages that I have looked at are GameMonkey, Lua, and V8 JavaScript Engine. V8 JavaScript has the most appeal so far. I don't really want to use GameMonkey because AFAIK it doesn't support 64-bit addressing. Lua is written in C so I would probably use the C++ wrapper, but I really don't like mixing C and C++ code.

So are there some other alternatives that I could look at?

Havens

Lua compiles cleanly off-the-shelf as C++. – Ileum

Thanks lhf, that is great news :) – Havens

also thanks to starblue for fixing my tags :) – Havens

Answer 1

I say Lua. It's ultraportable (It even runs under PalmOS, WindowsCE and DOS!), small (200-300k), fast and it is very easy to interface it with C/C++.

Also, Michael Pall makes amazing progress with his LUA JIT implementation. His current beta-4 supports x86 and x86_64 jitting and beats the crap out of almost every interpreter language I know: http://luajit.org/

Sabba

Wow, this is exciting, I will be using lua JIT :). Thanks. – Havens

Answer 2

I personally prefer Lua over others. Maybe because it's used by WoW and I do my own tweaks for WoW addons. But I've seen many opinions that is good, even on SO.

Freeforall

Yes, I have chosen to use Lua. Thanks :) – Havens

Answer 3

Maybe Falcon, ChaiScript, IO or even AngelScript might match your requirements?

Footplate

Thanks, Haven't seen Falcon / ChaiScript / or IO before. Falcon is an interesting language. – Havens

Yes, I use it in a big project and it's a better alternative than Python for some reasons. That said, I suppose it will work in 64bit but I didn't try yet. – Footplate

Just wanted to verify that 64bit ChaiScript does work. It's only been officially tested on Linux, but 0 issues were found. – Consubstantiate

Answer 4

You could also use Squirrel, it is C++, with a C/Java-like syntax, supporting OO (even class inheritance) and many neat things. It is in par with Lua in terms of speed, but the code size once compiled is slightly bigger.

If you are writing your program in C++ you might prefer it over Lua, and the syntax is much more appealing (to the eye and your productivity if you are writing C++ code often).

Atalayah

Answer 5

If you use qt you could use qtscript. Otherwise python might be a good idea.

Grenier