PicoC: a very small C interpreter for scripting

Language interpreters are great for experimenting with new or buggy pieces of code - just experiment at the prompt and copy what works into a file for posterity. I've started looking through the parsing code for PicoC, and its all nice and readable. But I'm surprised this was used in an actual system, embedded or not. C is an absolutely miserable language whose saving graces are executable size and speed. It lacks reasonable features to use for scripting, like code-as-data in Bash or the dynamism of Python and Ruby. There are even embedded scripting languages like LUA. What does C offer as a scripting language, except perhaps familiarity?

I used Ch[1] in a commercial product and I would highly dis-recommend C as a scripting language. Something has to be said for high-level semantics, dynamism and syntax designed for interactive work. I find Lisp, Lua and Groovy to be joy to work with, but C is not an ideal extension/embedded/scripting language. Use something easier.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch_interpreter" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch_interpreter</a>

The links for these should read (code.google.com)

See also: <a href="http://bellard.org/tcc/" rel="nofollow">http://bellard.org/tcc/</a> a compiler, but small and #!tcc can be put at the top of .c files to make them scripts.<p>Also see: <a href="http://root.cern.ch/drupal/content/cint" rel="nofollow">http://root.cern.ch/drupal/content/cint</a> — an interpretor, but large.

How refreshing to see something that only has 'readline' as a dependency and otherwise just requires a working C compiler and 'make'.

I wonder how it compares to other small systems like Lua, or, say Antirez' Jim interpreter, in terms of speed and features.

Very cool, there is even an interactive prompt. I wonder how hard is to make this interpreter "safe".

Personally I would use Forth for this. PicoC looks interesting but if I were to weigh my options (i.e. PicoC vs Forth in his example app UAV-onboard system, I would definitely go Forth).

Would this be allowed in an iPhone application, since it's all C?