expr VS embedded-scripting-languages

Not diminishing the article at all, there's massive value I've gained from leveraging this runtime solution in multiple projects: https://github.com/antonmedv/expr

The language is easy enough for people to pick-up.

Uses the [expr](https://github.com/antonmedv/expr) language to achieve this and I've been super happy with the results.

I have been using expr (https://github.com/antonmedv/expr) to do something like this for a while. no complains so far.

If you wanted it to not require putting in the operation first and just accept string equations (without using something like https://github.com/antonmedv/expr) you could parse, tokenize and then process the input.

Hopefully the linked README provides a general overview (I know I need to write some more documentation!), but Steel is an implementation of the scheme programming language (not entirely compliant yet, but aiming for R5RS and R7RS compliance). It can be used as a standalone language via the interpreter/repl (like Python or Racket), or it can be embedded inside applications, like Lua. There are hundreds (thousands, probably) of embeddable languages, each with their own flavor - see a list compiled here for example https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages

Use cases are generally for either configuration, scripting, or plugins - so scripting in games, or adding extensions to your text editor without having to use FFI or RPC + serializing a bunch of data. The advantage it has over using dynamic libraries (in general) is it runs in the same process, and can access the internal data structures directly without a lot of ceremony involved. The downside is typically is not as fast as native code unless a JIT is involved.

Javascript is an example of an embedded scripting, where the browser is the host application.

> There is a huge opportunity, IMO, for more players here.

There are quite a few embeddable scripting languages [1]. I think these days it's less common to embed a language mostly because there are good high-level languages that applications can be predominantly written in.

[1] https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages

I'm not a huge fan of Lua but I think it is at least way more popular and better on every measure than TCL. There are plenty of other better less well-known options too: Rhai, Wren, AngelScript, Starlark (for some use cases), etc. There's a good list here.

or perhaps use one of this list (depending on who's writing the configuration): https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages

https://github.com/dbohdan/embedded-scripting-languages (coincidentally, from a user whose name I recognize from the Tcl wiki)