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.

  • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    103
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    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

    • WatTyler@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      27
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.

    • gomp@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      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).

      • mbirth@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        2 months ago

        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.

      • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        2 months ago

        You’ve defined yourself into an impossible bind: you want something extremely portable, universal but with a small disk imprint, and you want it to be general purpose and versatile.

        The problem is that to be universal and general purpose, you need a lot of libraries to interact with whatever type of systems you might have it on (and the peculiarities of each), and you need libraries that do whatever type of interactions with those systems that you specify.

        E.g. under-the-hood, python’s open("<filename>", 'r') is a systemcall to the kernel. But is that Linux? BSD? Windows NT? Android? Mach?

        What if you want your script to run a CLI command in a subshell? Should it call “cmd”? or “sh”? or “powershell”? Okay, okay, now all you need it to do is show the contents of a file… But is the command “cat” or “type” or “Get-FileContents”?

        Or maybe you want to do more than simple read/write to files and string operations. Want to have graphics? That’s a library. Want serialization for data? That’s a library. Want to read from spreadsheets? That’s a library. Want to parse XML? That’s a library.

        So you’re looking at a single binary that’s several GBs in size, either as a standalone or a self-extracting installer.

        Okay, maybe you’ll only ever need a small subset of libraries (basic arithmetic, string manipulation, and file ops, all on standard glibc gnu systems ofc), so it’s not really “general purpose” anymore. So you find one that’s small, but it doesn’t completely fit your use case (for example, it can’t parse uci config files); you find another that does what you need it to, but also way too much and has a huge footprint; you find that perfect medium and it has a small, niche userbase… so the documentation is meager and it’s not easy to learn.

        At this point you realize that any language that’s both easy to learn and powerful enough to manage all instances of some vague notion of “computer” will necessarily evolve to being general purpose. And being general purpose requires dependencies. And dependencies reduce portability.

        At this point your options are: make your own language and interpreter that does exactly what you want and nothing more (so all the dependencies can be compiled in), or decide which criteria you are willing to compromise on.

      • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        2 months ago

        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?

      • flubba86@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        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@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        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

        • maniii@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 months ago

          I found installing Go-sdk a total PiTA. It is okay as a developer environment. But bash + gnu utils + core utils seem much more sane to me.

          Of course I mostly work with Linux systems and hardly ever have to deal with Scripting for Windoze.

  • bc3114@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    34
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    luajit is small, fast(well, it can jit), and has a small but complete standard library and can do FFI pretty easily, should be ideal for most homelab usecase

    ldd $(which luajit)                                                                                
            linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffee9dc7000)
            libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007fb4db618000)
            libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fb4db613000)
            libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007fb4db5f3000)
            libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007fb4db3ca000)
            /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fb4db799000)
    
  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    Python is what you want. You can install it on just about any system.

    Other than that maybe Lua but that will be hell.

    • digdilem@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      2 months ago

      Python is what you want. You can install it on just about any system.

      Perl and bash are already there, no need to install anything.

        • digdilem@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          2 months ago

          Try it now - go on. Type “perl” and tell me what you get.

          And if you’re so certain it’s not used, try removing it and see how well your computer works afterwards.

        • neomachino@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 months ago

          Is this the case? I don’t feel like I’ve ever had to install Perl but I’ve had to install Python plenty of times and I use both pretty frequently on a daily basis. Not to mention a newer version, older version, 2.7.4 instead of 2.7.3.

        • digdilem@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 months ago

          Um, exactly the opposite on all the distros I use. All Enterprise Linux distros, Suse and Debian.

  • cmhe@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    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@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.

  • digdilem@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    Perl is already installed on most linux machines and unless you start delving into module usage, you won’t need to install anything else.

    Python is more fashionable, but needs installing on the host and environments can get complicated. I don’t think it scales as well as Perl, if that’s a concern of yours.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

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

  • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    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?

    • blackbrook@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 months ago

      I was thinking about recommending TCL as a joke. My favorite thing about it is it’s “whimsicly typed.”

    • digdilem@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 months 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.

      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@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        He doesn’t have bash. I’m not sure I’ve seen a system this millennium with Perl but not bash.

        • digdilem@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 months ago

          Try it now - type perl. It’s a dependency on a huge amount of core system tools.

          • moonpiedumplings@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            OP is on OpenWRT (a router distro), and Alpine. Those distros don’t come with very much by default, and perl is not a core dependency for any of their default tools. Neither is python.

            Based on the way the cosmo project has statically linked builds of python, but not perl, I’m guessing it’s more difficult to create a statically linked perl. This means that it’s more difficult to put perl on a system where it isn’t already there, and that system doesn’t have a package manager*, than python or other options.

            *or the the user doesn’t want to use a package manager. OP said they just want to copy a binary around. Can you do that with perl?

            • digdilem@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              2 months ago

              OP is on OpenWRT

              Fair point - I missed that, buried in the comments as it was.

              In that scenario, you use what’s available, I guess.

              OP said they just want to copy a binary around. Can you do that with perl?

              This is linux. Someone will have done it.

  • cerement@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    2 months ago

    another vote for Lua – lua5.4 is available for all 8 Alpine architectures, tiny installed size (120–200 kB) (and Alpine package only installs two files)

  • mub@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    2 months ago

    I honestly love Powershell, but haven’t tried the Linux version yet. I only use Bash on linux but it has a load of odd quirks that make it unpleasant to use imo. Can’t comment on anything else.

    • tankplanker@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      I use powershell for work as I need the m365 modules for work and its very flexible with decent module availability to plug in all sorts.

      However it absolutely sucks for large data handling, anything over 10k rows is just horrendous, I typically work with a few million rows. You can make it work with using .Net to process it within your script but its something to be aware of. Being able to extend with .Net can be extremely useful.

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    2 months ago

    Realistically whatever problems you see in python will be there for any other language. Python is the most ubiquitously available thing after bash for a reason.

    Also you mentioned provisioning scripts, is that Ansible? If so python is already there, if you mean really just bash scripts I can tell you that does not scale well. Also if you already have some scriptsz what language are they on? Why not write the function there?

    Also you’re running syncthing on these machines, I don’t think python is larger than that (but I might be wrong).

    • gomp@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      Also you mentioned provisioning scripts, is that Ansible? If so python is already there, if you mean really just bash scripts I can tell you that does not scale well. Also if you already have some scriptsz what language are they on? Why not write the function there??

      Currently it’s mostly nixos, plus a custom thing that generates preconfigured openwrt images that I then deploy manually. I have a mess of other vms and stuff, but I plan to phase out everything and migrate to nixos (except the openwrt stuff, since nixos doesn’t run on mips).

      I don’t really need to run this specific synchthing-ID script except on my PC (I do the provisioning from there), but I have written scripts that run on my router (using busybox sh) and I was wondering if there is a “goto” scripting that I can use everywhere.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    2 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).

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    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.

    Why are you making it hard on yourself? apt/dnf install a language to use and use it.

  • x1gma@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    The smallest footprint for an actual scripting probably will be posix sh - since you already have it ready.

    A slightly bigger footprint would be Python or Lua.

    If you can drop your requirement for actual scripting and are willing to add a compile step, Go and it’s ecosystem is pretty dang powerful and it’s really easy to learn for small automation tasks.

    Personally, with the requirement of not adding too much space for runtimes, I’d write it in go. You don’t need a runtime, you can compile it to a really small zero dependency lib and you have clean and readable code that you can extend, test and maintain easily.

    • endofline@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 months ago

      Bash? On windows it’s pretty much unusable even if you use cygwin. Python or Lua are the only reasonable suggestions here

    • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      Nah, gross. You need to set a bunch of global options to get sane behavior on errors.

      Nushell is shaping up really really nicely, and it’ll actually stop executing if something fails! Even if that happens in a pipe! And it’s not super eager to convert between arrays and strings if you use the wrong cryptic rune.

    • digdilem@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      I used it for scripting a decade after everyone else, but even I have to admit PHP is rarely the best choice now.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      I’ve actually tried using PHP on OpenWRT and embedded before. It’s not exactly lightweight, it’s a memory and CPU hog. Keep in mind that the kind of machine that runs OpenWRT might only have 32 or even 16 MB of RAM to work with.

      Also, PHP is not the first language that comes to mind when doing data processing and/or functional programming. You can but it doesn’t lend itself well to it.

      • Lemmchen@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        Yeah, it’s really flexible when it comes to arrays and string processing. Super easy to work with, too.