> > Frankly, the inclusion of those preexisting languages would simply
> >set you back even further than just relying on specprocs. It'd just be
> >neat to do, but god help you if you let anyone use them.
>
> Perl's "use Safe" was the kind of application I had in mind.
>
> Writing a language isn't fun. Adapting an existing one has been done.
> Not as frequently for hostile applications, but still some work there.
Perl is a nice, stable language. Even the versions for windows
rarely tend to fail. All the same, it's a full featured language, and it
doesn't have things like the ability to restrict memory usage, detect
infinite loops, or deny a user the ability to read/write arbitrary files
owned by the mud process owner. Use safe is a nice idea - you can define
your opcodes to nail each problem function - but you still could have
infinte loops or unnatural resource consumption.
Really, I think that'd be the worst thing; you don't want to give
your builders the ability to crash the mud. That's why mud++ used 'sPICO'
- it was your standard PICO with 98% of the commands ripped out because
they allowed too much unsafe interaction with the envrionment.
We programmers would like perl, or whatever, but we have to depend
on builders who haven't a clue about this stuff to do the work. I think
we have to rely on a model that assumes hostile envrionments.
Aside from that, writing languages is fun. Weren't you the one
who got the lexxer out just a while ago?
PjD
P.S.
Also, the mechanism for insuring that we don't have name-space
conflicts while at the same time allowing for persistent memory objects,
all in embedded code is difficult.
I'm sure you wouldn't want a seperate persistent process for each
unique script..
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