JavaScript to Lua translator

https://github.com/wizzard0/js2lua

by luu • 11 years ago

35 13 11 years ago

github.com

simple10• 11 years ago

For reference, here's why JavaScript to Lua converters are really hard to make feature complete.

http://phrogz.net/lua/LearningLua_FromJS.html

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1022560/subtle-difference...

nothrabannosir2• 11 years ago

Do you have specific examples? I went over both lists, and most differences were either syntax, or "Lua has complicated feature X, JS doesn't."

alloyed• 11 years ago

Off of the top of my head, with varying difficulty

* js has UTF-16 strings with the same semantics(compare-by-value, immutable, interned) as lua strings. you could store UTF-16 in normal lua strings, but then you'd need some way of marshalling them for C code that expects const char* values

* JS has a lot of type coercions when doing binary operations, etc. replicating that seems like a source of indirection

* Lua tables have no explicit length, or any way to preallocate, so it's not entirely obvious what Array(len) or a.length = newlen would do

wizzard04• 11 years ago

Take a look what happens if you write something simple, like "a[5]=1": http://es5.github.io/#x15.4.5.1

Or "a > b": http://es5.github.io/#x11.8.5

This, in turn, causes all sorts of weird behavior nicely described at https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

gpfault• 11 years ago

How about a reverse translator that lets me write more lua and less javascript?

justincormack2• 11 years ago

There is Moonshine http://moonshinejs.org/ to run Lua in the browser. There are a few more too.

nothrabannosir2• 11 years ago

This repository is Windows only, it uses \ as a path delimiter all over the place. Gives you weird error messages on Linux.

Consider using / instead: it is accepted on both Windows and UNIX.

wizzard04• 11 years ago

Yep, *nix support is definitely part of the plan.

justincormack2• 11 years ago

Tessel has a Javascript to Lua compiler too, as their hardware runs Lua underneath https://github.com/tessel/colony-compiler

meowface• 11 years ago

Is there any reason why they didn't just stick with Lua, or some abstraction over Lua like Moonscript (http://moonscript.org)? Why is there such a big desire to put Javascript in places where it's not needed?

wizzard04• 11 years ago

Author here. Actually, I wanted to do exactly the reverse - ability to use tons of Node.js modules in Lua, while coding in Lua. Think of it :)

fieldforceapp• 11 years ago

Just in case you haven't already heard of what the nice folks at Tessel are doing, this may be useful to you:

https://github.com/tessel/colony-compiler

wizzard04• 11 years ago

Author here. Tessel uses modified eLua, I want to use Node modules in vanilla Lua, so naturally that approach was not viable to me.

JavaScript to Lua translator

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