Michael T. Richter wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-21-10 at 15:19 +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> 
>> I really don't think you want a 
>> garbage-collected language for this, although I'm sure it's possible to 
>> use one if the heavy lifting is done in a low-level library.
> 
> 
> There are, in fact, hard realtime garbage collection algorithms
> available.  For some reason language designers just don't seem to want
> to implement them in their languages in favour of garbage collection
> algorithms that are easier to write.
> 
> What I'd like to see someday is a language whose runtime explicitly
> supports garbage-collection plug-ins so that you can use the appropriate
> collection algorithm for the appropriate situation.
> 
> Going to the OP's question?  Embed the Lua.  Ruby is a great language
> and great for embedding in applications, even, except in the specific
> case of what you're talking about right now: anything with hard realtime
> (and even soft realtime!) requirements.  Lua is a much faster language
> and has garbage collection that is far more easily tuned.


IIRC Lua was designed from the ground up to be embeddable in C code and 
to make interfacing with C easy. Of course, it's not Forth or Scheme, so 
I probably wouldn't use it ... :)