Re: Is Lua used as a data representation language?

[Jim Whitehead II <jnwhiteh@...>]

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 11:03 AM, Marc Balmer <marc@msys.ch> wrote:

There is an ongoing discussion in the NetBSD community about the "right" language for data representation.  The idea is to replace an older system called "proplib".  The discussion rotaes a bit around JSON and Lua as possible candidates, with probably a majority leaning towards JSON because it is smaller (some say a factor of ~16 compared to Lua).

One statement by a colleague is: "Now for the data transfer representation, as in D.'s proposal, JSON is an option, but LUA is not, simply because we have no (and there can not be any) small C binding to it."

I'd like to do a quick poll to see whether Lua is used as a language for data representation.  If you know of such uses, please mail me some details.

Of course general comments on the subject matter are welcome as well.

Thanks.
Marc

Sputnik [1] uses Lua for its data representation. The largest use of this is http://wowprogramming.com/docs/api, which is generated entirely from over 1500 Lua tables. I chose this representation for wowprogramming.com because it was easily extensible, and because it worked well with the fact that the rest of the software was written in Lua.

I think Lua is significantly easier to read and use than JSON, but interoperability does make the decision rather difficult. 

Just another point for your data, I am happy to answer any questions!

- Jim

[1]: http://sputnik.freewisdom.org/en/Lua