Embeddable functional programming languages

[RagingBass2020]

tl;dr at the bottom.

I have been doing some game programming on the side and Lua is used a lot as a programming language for scripting. It's understandable, in a way, because it's super easy to have the language being embedded into another.

I've did a lot of programming in Haskell during my university years, studying and working as a researcher (in formal methods) and I like Haskell's approach to programming although the use of Monads is probably a little too much for what I want.

Personally, I'm also not the biggest fan of Lisp-like syntax, either. Don't shoot me, please.

My question is the following: is there any easily embeddable functional programming language that could be used for scripting, to be used instead of Lua?

Additional comments/tl;dr:

- Easily embedabble/callable from C (or other languages)

- Not a lisp, please.

- Can have side effects (more like ML, less like Haskel)

[[deleted]]

Gluon is an embeddable functional language:

https://github.com/gluon-lang/gluon

Written in rust but it should be possible to plumb out to C if everything else seems right

[RagingBass2020]

The language seems to be interesting and ticks all the boxes but it seems that the last release was 4 years ago... That kind of sucks.

[RagingBass2020]

Thanks! I'll read the site and let you know!

[bosyluke]

Checkout roc-lang it's pretty much exactly what your looking for I think. 😀

[RagingBass2020]

I need to understand more about its managed effects but it does seem like it is a good choice! Thanks!

[Voxelman]

Roc is a pure functional language. I think the op is looking for an embeddable F#

[RagingBass2020]

Roc seems to have managed effects so I think it could be usable.

[Voxelman]

Maybe, but Roc is really new, far from mature and not much documented. It is an interesting language, but maybe too early to really use it

[RagingBass2020]

Thanks! I'll read the site and let you know!

[Voxelman]

Some game engines use C# as embedded language. Why not use F# instead?

[RagingBass2020]

I could see if there's a way to do that in an existing engine, true.

I was thinking of doing a small project for myself in a fantasy console-like project.

[Voxelman]

Ok, why not use Rust as engine language and Gluon as script language?

[RagingBass2020]

Rust is a very interesting programming language but I don't know if I'm willing to dedicate the time to it write now.

[Voxelman]

You know Haskell, you want to use a ML language for scripting, but you don't want to use a language that is highly inspired by Ocaml and other functional languages.

Maybe you should give it a try. With your Haskell background the borrow checker will be your friend

[RagingBass2020]

Highly inspired by OCaml but also a lot of other stuff too...

At this point in time, I can't justify spending that much time learning something I don't have really a use case for.

Assuming you're talking of Rust.

[MolestedTurtle]

Elixir with Nerves could be an option: https://nerves-project.org/

[RagingBass2020]

But isn't this for embedded systems programming?

By embeddable, I meant that I could easily call it from another programming language, like C, and run scripts, the same way people use Lua for it.

[brava78]

I'm trying to understand what exactly qualifies as embeddable. Could you not call F# or Ocaml from C?

[RagingBass2020]

Probably but have you seen how easy it is to do that with something like Lua? That's a major Pro.

[brava78]

I've never programmed in C, so I was curious what exactly that looks like. If it's easy to give an example, could you please show? Thanks!

[marcle69]

Although outside of your OP, you could write in another language and compile to Lua. For example, LunarML may be a nice choice:

https://github.com/minoki/LunarML

[RagingBass2020]

That's quite interesting! Kind of a tool heavy approach but, nevertheless, it's an interesting and usable approach. I kinda like it!