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Subject:	Re: [geda-user] FOSDEM
From:	Chris Smith <space DOT dandy AT icloud DOT com>
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Date:	Fri, 06 Feb 2015 09:38:17 +0000
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> On 4 Feb 2015, at 23:33, DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Also, when your file format is a scripting language, it becomes *very*
> easy to write a virus.
> 
> There, fixed that for you.  Executable content is a no-no.

While that’s generally the case, it’s not true of Lua, which was designed from the ground up as an embedded language rather than a fully fledged scripting language.  All access to system resources, file I/O, etc are provided by libraries which must be explicitly loaded by the host application — the Lua interpreter itself has no native ability to perform those functions.  I chose Lua to provide scripting for a project for exactly those reasons, having initially preferred Python or PERL; after lots of research it turned out to be nigh on impossible to securely embed PERL or Python because so many ‘unsafe’ abilities are implemented directly within the interpreter and it would border on the trivial for a virus writer to circumvent any restrictions imposed upon a script.  By contrast it is trivial, even using the stock Lua interpreter, to provide a sandboxed environment.

Lua was also designed with ‘rich’ configuration/data files as a primary use case and as a result the syntax is very clean and simple — a simple INI file is almost a valid Lua script, except that strings must be quoted.

Lua is hardly a ‘toy’ language either.  It is used in Adobe Lightroom, several Mercedes Benz vehicles and Osmond PCB, as an EDA example.

Regards,
Chris
—
Chris Smith <space DOT dandy AT icloud DOT com>

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