[Nuke]

sexps are ok, up to the point where you need actual code to run complex algorithms.

It's worth noting here that the sexp system is Turing-complete.

didnt you once suggest turning the sexp system into a pure lisp interpreter? that would be pretty cool.

the real difference between the two systems is the interface features exposed to each. there is some degree of communication between the 2, and youd need the features of both, i figure, to pull off whats suggested in this thread. lua is good at both the object level and can operate on its small set data types, and also has hooks, exposing more entry points within the engine to run code. sexp system on the other hand works with strings and numbers, oop is not possible. also arguments dealing with objects require a c level interface, and you are limited to a single entry point. then the obvious limits, like the string-length of a sexp and sexp count, as it was implemented around a point and click interface for non-coders. yet still there are things you absolutely have to have sexps for. like try freeing a beam with a script (actually you can do this by setting up and running an event from the scripting environment). thats comparable to setting up and rendering a render target with a sexp (again, also possible with several script-evals).

[Mongoose]

sexps are ok, up to the point where you need actual code to run complex algorithms.

It's worth noting here that the sexp system is Turing-complete.

But can FRED pass a Turing test?

[Qent]

sexps are ok, up to the point where you need actual code to run complex algorithms.

It's worth noting here that the sexp system is Turing-complete.

Is it still limited by code size?

[Goober5000]

Is it still limited by code size?

Well, yes.  But so is any physical computer, since a theoretical Turing machine has infinite capacity.

[Qent]

But the SEXP limit is (was?) low enough that you (GB) could hit it easily while writing useful stuff.

[The E]

That limit has been raised considerably (quadrupled, to be clear). You have to do some crazy awesome stuff to hit it now.

[Nuke]

thats why im all for the full lisp implementation, assuming that allows for larger bits of code. real issue is talking to lua, you need to communicate through short named globals, which goes against good lua practices, just because all the lines of a script eval need to be really short. i actually think its easier to comminicate from lua to sexp, than vise versa.

That limit has been raised considerably (quadrupled, to be clear). You have to do some crazy awesome stuff to hit it now.

linesize, count or both?

[The E]

The issue was that the sexp serializer/deserializer has a string length limit (because of static buffer sizes) of 4096 characters per event. This was raised to 16384, in other words, you need a single event that is 16kb large to hit the same limit.

At some point, all this c-string bull**** should be turned into SCP_strings, so we don't have to deal with these issues at all.

[Goober5000]

As of revision 8556, parselo functions now have SCP_string equivalents, so this should be doable now.