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I want to choose an embedded scripting language that i will use on C++. It should connect a database such as Oracle. My host application is a server application. That will pass raw data to script. The script will parse and do some specific logics. Also updates database. Then script will returns raw data as result. Can you help me to choose it? Thanx

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What is the problem you are trying to solve? Why do you want to do it this way, instead of just using C++ or just using ie. Python? Is speed important? – Alexander May 31 '11 at 14:14
2  
i want to seperate my server codes and bussiness logic. Also bussiness logic frequently changes. I already C++ all steps. I will make a core that only runs as server. Bussiness logics will be on scripts. – suyuti May 31 '11 at 14:19

5 Answers

up vote 15 down vote

Lua is intended to be an embedded language and has a simple API. Python and Ruby are much more general purpose and are (for embedding at least) significantly more complicated. This alone would lead me to using Lua.

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Python is also intended to be an embedded language: docs.python.org/extending/embedding.html – Alexander May 31 '11 at 14:10
6  
@Alexander: Not intended. It's possible to embedd it but it was not it's initial purpose and you can see it in the effort needed to embedded it. – Klaim May 31 '11 at 14:16
up vote 7 down vote

Lua is already mentioned and using luabind will give you a more c++ style interface.
You could also take a look at chaiscript. It was more designed to fit into c++.

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+1: for Lua/Luabind. – yasouser May 31 '11 at 14:35
+1: for Chaiscript. It is THAT easy to integrate Even overloading of Methods works. – schoetbi Dec 12 '11 at 13:16
up vote 6 down vote

Save this as test.c:

#include <Python.h>

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  Py_Initialize();
  PyRun_SimpleString("from time import time,ctime\n"
                     "print 'Today is',ctime(time())\n");
  Py_Finalize();
  return 0;
}

Run this command (if you have Python 2.7 installed):

gcc test.c -o test -I/usr/include/python2.7 -lpython2.7

Python has now been embedded. This took me under a minute, so I'm having a hard time understanding the claims of the "effort needed to embed it".

The example is from http://docs.python.org/extending/embedding.html.

I would suggest Python over Lua, even though Lua is also nice.

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are there any sample project? I need oracle connectivity from script. Byte array passing to / receiving from script method. – suyuti May 31 '11 at 14:49
You can connect to oracle with Python by installing the cx_Oracle module: orafaq.com/wiki/Python. Note that Lua also seem to support Oracle: keplerproject.org/luasql/manual.html – Alexander May 31 '11 at 14:52
up vote 2 down vote

I've had a lot of success adding embedded scripting to my C++ applications using AngelScript. I've found it very easy to bind and the syntax to be very comfortable, but it depends on your target audience. I found Lua to be very fast and relatively easy to bind, but the syntax was a bit uncomfortable to me. AngelScript is very C/C++ like which I find very easy to understand and maintain, but to someone who spends more of their time working with CSS or HTML, might find it cumbersome and the language idioms might not translate well..

http://www.angelcode.com/angelscript/

http://www.gamedev.net/forum/49-angelcode/

Just realized I had answered a similar question here:

What is a good embeddable language I can use for scripting inside my software?

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up vote 0 down vote

TCL would be another option for an easy to embed scripting language.

personally I'd go with the scripting language you and/or whoever will be using the scripting language is most familiar with already, especially if end users will be able to run custom scripts, you will need to know what, if any, languages they are familiar with in their business domain e.g. CAD/CAM people may know TCL, gaming people may know Lua etc.

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