Quirrel

Quirrel is a fast, high-level imperative programming language, designed to be a lightweight but powerful scripting tool that fits within the size, memory bandwidth, and real-time requirements of applications like games.

It is a mature scripting language used in dozens of games and other apps (including web servers and embeddable platforms) with hundreds of millions of installations. Millions of devices are running Quirrel VMs daily.

Quirrel has simple integration and bindings into any C++ application.

Quirrel has C/Java/C++-like syntax with a clear, rich and simple type system, but the language has a very dynamic nature like Python/Lua/JavaScript. Easy to start while being much safer than Lua and JS, with equal performance to Lua. The whole syntax and documentation can be read in approximately an hour.

It is based on the Squirrel scripting language, but modified to be safer, stricter and faster. It branched off as a separate language in 2019. Gaijin Entertainment has used Squirrel with modifications since 2006, transitioning to Quirrel since 2019, across all its projects and platforms (X360, PS3, PS4, XBoxOne, Switch, iOS, Android, Windows/Mac/Linux PC).

Quirrel offers a wide range of features like dynamic typing, higher order functions, generators, tail recursion, exception handling, coroutines, automatic memory management, modules with hot reload, static code analysis.

Feedback, PRs and suggestions are appreciated!

Documentation project page

GitHub page