Usually it's just bash, as long as I don't need any nifty data structures. But keeping track of data in bash is a pita , so that's where Lua comes in for me. I

Usually it's just bash, as long as I don't need any nifty data structures. But keeping track of data in bash is a pita , so that's where Lua comes in for me. I like Lua for how thin and simple it is, with virtually no dependencies on anything. The good thing is that it runs anywhere where I have a C compiler, the bad thing is that it comes with no batteries included - there's not even a native function for creating a directory. I use Lua a lot in my professional work as embedded software engineer, where the main business logic of the apps are written in Lua, with some thin C layers underneath for integration with various libraries and the OS. Still, there are a lot of downsides to Lua, mostly the weak typing that bites me a lot. I'm slowly moving away from Lua to Nim these days, you should check that out if you haven't yet.