grace VS Jinx

I've made a lot of great progress on Grace, my bytecode interpreted language. Its syntax is inspired by Python, but it's very opinionated with some more "rigid" semantics. While there are probably some bugs I need to find and weird syntax errors I haven't tried yet that will break the compiler, it's got functions, control flow, file importing, built in primitive types and lists and dictionaries, and exceptions fully implemented.

I've been working on my own interpreted language Grace (https://github.com/ryanjeffares/grace) using C++17. It's similar to Python and Ruby, but I intend on using reference counting as opposed to a garbage collector. Top priority now are classes, functions as first class objects, importing other files, native functions, and squeezing out some more performance - most operations are really fast but my function calls are a serious bottleneck, will need a refactor. It's my first lang after following Robert Nystrom's Crafting Interpreters and some other resources, been a tonne of fun!

Check out jinx https://jamesboer.github.io/Jinx/

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of automated tests where it makes sense. I wrote a scripting language that I use for my personal game projects, and I never would have been able to do it if it weren't for the battery of tests for every feature, error, and corner case I could think of. But games are rarely like other software, with hard rules about what is "correct" or "incorrect". And it would be a nightmare to try to keep up with designers, constantly tweaking and tuning, so what's "correct" is literally a day to day, constantly moving target.

A second trial for you might be Jinx. Depending on your definition of procedural, Jinx is 100% only procedural. https://jamesboer.github.io/Jinx/

Jinx (embeddable scripting language) works as following:

Feel free to look at my own interpreter, written in modern C++. You're welcome to ask me if you have any questions.

I use my own scripting language more like content, especially for things like one-off events and behaviors. Example: scripting special behaviors for a boss fight, or a room with a unique trap in it, or any other sort of one-off behavior that would be overkill for C++, but too complex for most other types of data-driven content. These days, visual scripting also helps to fill in these gaps between content and procedure.

You're welcome to look at my scripting language Jinx, written in modern C++. Just let me know if you have specific questions. Data flow is JxLexer.cpp -> JxParser.cpp -> JxScript.cpp. Most everything else is implementation details. Also, note the parer is pretty complex, mostly because Jinx has a crazily flexible syntax for functions.

Feel free to look at Jinx if you want an example of what I consider a fairly easy-to-use and integrate scripting system. Obviously, I'm a bit biased since I wrote it.

If you're working in UTF-8 internally, you could just write your own UTF-16 to UTF-8 conversion functions to convert strings at API boundaries. I did this in my scripting language because I didn't want to bring in dependencies.