starlark-go VS goawk

Starlark in go https://github.com/google/starlark-go is a great way to combine the best of both, the ease of use of Python and the simplicity of go.

I have been building a platform for deploying internal web applications using this approach https://github.com/claceio/clace. Use Starlark to configure the application, the platform itself is built in go.

The big unknown is your task definition: what does user-defined logic look like? If you're expecting go code, that's gonna need some cleverness because of the compiled nature of it. There's a node runtime implemented in go if you want to provide sandboxed javascript (check the source of k6.io, it's the main one I know that uses it). If you want to provide building blocks and let them compose them, starlark might be a good choice.

Another one of those (with broader language support) is the Starlark language, which has a Go implementation: https://github.com/google/starlark-go

Every config format gets as complex to be touring complete in the end. We had similar problems and eventually got rid of that complexity and switched to starlark (the bazel config language), was a huge benefit for the tools. https://github.com/google/starlark-go "Starlark is a dialect of Python intended for use as a configuration language. Like Python, it is an untyped dynamic language with high-level data types, first-class functions with lexical scope, and garbage collection."

Direct link to the Go implementation of Starlark: https://github.com/google/starlark-go

For a Python-like syntax, https://github.com/google/starlark-go is the language used in Babel. It's very mature, but since it is used in a massive mature project with a specific purpose, it doesn't move fast or drift from the spec of its Java-based sibling. It doesn't have exception try except blocks or some other features you might expect, but for short extension logic, it might be exactly what you want with the stability you can depend upon.

Context: https://github.com/google/starlark-go/blob/cfacd890221418a2dc2c736f7b5e3476c38709b1/starlark/int_posix64.go

Thus envd is more like Dockerfile, while it uses a simplified python dialect starlark https://github.com/google/starlark-go as the build language.

Use Go (mostly for starlark-go)

TIL: GoAWK [1] - A POSIX-compliant AWK interpreter written in Go, with CSV support.

[1]: https://github.com/benhoyt/goawk

Another nice project that I have used from time to time (and a very good source for insight) is the awk interpreter written in go https://github.com/benhoyt/goawk

No, I want exactly the opposite - it should be a , b,c as a single string field containing a literal comma, and c. For example, https://github.com/benhoyt/goawk has csv support. https://github.com/benhoyt/goawk/blob/master/docs/csv.md - more info.

I've had a go at solving this in this PR -- feedback welcome. I don't love it, but oh well, it solves the problem at hand. Your comment pointed me in the right direction, thanks again.

There are quite a few re-implementations of scripting languages like Lua in Go. I've written an AWK interpreter in Go.

github.com/benhoyt/goawk -> this library lets you embed an AWK runtime in your applications, very easy to use and useful for enabling some powerful scripting in things you build

Yes, that's right. With my simplistic UTF-8-based implementation it turned length() -- for example -- from O(1) to O(N), turning O(N) algorithms which use length() into O(N^2). See this issue: https://github.com/benhoyt/goawk/issues/93

Similar with substr() and other string functions, which when operating as bytes are O(1), but become O(N) when trying to count the number of codepoints as UTF-8.

GNU Gawk has a fancier approach, which stores strings as UTF-8 as long as it can, but converts to UTF-32 if it needs to (eg: the string is non-ASCII and you call substr).

It looks like Brian Kernighan's code has the same issue with length() and substr(). I'm going to try to email him about this, as I think it's kind of a performance blocker.

I'm not sure if it was via my personal website or just my GitHub profile, but I got my current job at Canonical due to the CTO there reaching out about my GoAWK project (https://github.com/benhoyt/goawk). I get regular recruitment emails because I have my CV/resume online: most of them are very low-effort, but 1 in 20 or something are interesting emails where the recruiter has actually looked at my website and will tailor it personally. I also just enjoy technical writing, and get joy out of sharing it on HN. So it's "worth it" for me.