Re: GDB and scripting languages - which

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu dot org>]

> Cc: gdb@sourceware.org
> From: Jim Blandy <jimb@codesourcery.com>
> Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:00:39 -0800
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> >> From: Jim Blandy <jimb@codesourcery.com>
> >> Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 09:25:09 -0800
> >> 
> >> There's a lot about Lua I like.  However, it doesn't have exceptions.
> >
> > I think you are mistaken: Lua does have exceptions, it just calls them
> > ``fallbacks''.
> 
> When I search the manual at http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/, I don't
> see any references to 'fallbacks'.  The Lua HISTORY file mentions
> them, but they seem to be an operator overloading mechanism, not an
> exception-handling mechanism.  Where can I find documentation on
> these?

Here:

     http://www.lua.org/spe.html

I don't know why this feature isn't mentioned in the current manual,
maybe it was renamed.

> Even if the exception issue is worked out, though, I'm still concerned
> that Lua doesn't have as much momentum as Python.  Python's wealth of
> other libraries available (gui; graphing; networking) brings a lot of
> potential with it.  And there are a lot of programmers out there who
> could just start scripting GDB the day Python support is committed.

Python is a full-fledged programming language, not a language created
for extending other programs.  Do you really think we need networking,
graphics, and GUI in GDB scripts?  That sounds like an awful overhead.

As for familiarity with it, the GDB scripting language we have now is
even less widespread than Lua.