Scripting language for C++

c++ scripting scripting-language
Diego Sevilla picture Diego Sevilla · Jun 30, 2010 · Viewed 45.8k times · Source

I'm getting a little rusty in scripting languages, provided they're popping like mushrooms lately :)

Today I thought that it would be nice to have a scripting language that talks seamlessly to C++, that is, could use C++ classes, and, the most important for me, could be compiled into C++ or some DLL/.SO (plus its .h) so that I could link it into my C++ program and make use of the classes the script defines or implements.

I know I could embed any popular scripting language such as lua, ruby, python... but the interface usually includes some kind of "eval" function that evaluates the provided scripting code. Depending on the tool used to couple C++ and the scripting language, the integration for callbacks of the script into C++ could be more or less easy to write, but I haven't seen any scripting language that actually allows me to write independent modules that are exposed as a .h and .so/dll to my program (maybe along the lines of a scripting language that generates C++ code).

Do you know any such tool/scripting language?

Thanks in advance.

PD. I've been thinking along the lines of Vala or Haskell's GHC. They generate C, but not C++...

Answer

Klaim picture Klaim · Jun 30, 2010

UPDATE 2020: Today I would probably go with Lua + Sol2/3 except if I really want to avoid Lua as a language. Chaiscript becomes a good candidate in this case though it is not optimal performance-wise compared to Lua+Sol2/3 (though it was greatly improved through years so it is still good enough in many cases). Falcon have been dead for some years, RIP.

The following ones are more C++ integration oriented than language bindings :

  • ChaiScript - trying at the moment in a little project, interesting, this one is MADE with C++ in mind and works by just including a header! Not sure if it's good for a big project yet but will see, try it to have some taste!
  • (not maintained anymore) Falcon - trying on a big project, excellent; it's not a "one include embed" as ChaiScript but it's because it's really flexible, and totally thought to be used in C++ (only C++ code in libs) - I've decided to stick with it for my biggest project that require a lot of scripting flexibility (comparable to ruby/python )
  • AngelScript - didn't try yet
  • GameMonkey - didn't try yet
  • Io - didn't try yet

For you, if you really want to write your scripting module in C++ and easily expose it to the scripting language, I would recommand going with Falcon. It's totally MADE in C++, all the modules/libraries are written that way.

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