Neko is a high-level dynamically typed programming language which can
also be used as an embedded scripting language. It has been designed
to provide a common runtime for several different languages. Neko is
not only very easy to learn and use, but also has the flexibility of
being able to extend the language with C libraries. You can even write
generators from your own language to Neko and then use the Neko
Runtime to compile, run, and access existing libraries.
If you need to add a scripting language to your application, Neko
provides one of the best tradeoffs available between simplicity,
extensibility and speed.
Neko allows the language designer to focus on design whilst reusing a
fast and well constructed runtime, as well as existing libraries for
accessing filesystem, network, databases, xml...
Neko has a compiler and virtual machine. The Virtual Machine is both
very lightweight and extremely well optimised so that it can run very
quickly. The VM can be easily embedded into any application and your
libraries are directly accessible using the C foreign function
interface.
The compiler converts a source .neko file into a bytecode .n file that
can be executed with the Virtual Machine. Although the compiler is
written in Neko itself, it is still very fast. You can use the
compiler as standalone commandline executable separated from the VM,
or as a Neko library to perform compile-and-run for interactive
languages.
Note that the Fedora package does not yet include the Apache modules
(mod_neko and mod_tora) owing to the difficulty in getting them to
compile.