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Lua vs Perl: catalog facts
Lua	Perl
Free Free and open source.	Free Free and open source.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
Small interpreter that is easy to embed in other programs Simple language that is quick to learn	Very strong text processing and regular expressions Over 42,000 CPAN distributions
Small standard library compared with general-purpose languages The official site distributes source code rather than ready-made installers	Terse syntax can be hard to read Less common in new projects than Python
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: MIT	License: Artistic-1.0-Perl OR GPL-1.0-or-later
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 24, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 24, 2026

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