P_P_qRs·Feb 6, 2026Submission
1 points · Open discussionleafo
moonscript
C2012–2026
leafo / moonscript
moonscript
:crescent_moon: A language that compiles to Lua
8Distinct people
12Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
3.5KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
:crescent_moon: A language that compiles to Lua
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
I didn't roll my own parser generator, I used LPeg: http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/lpeg/ It's a great library, I highly recommend it. I've assembled a few parsers using…
leafo used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 11:56:56 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year12 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2012-03-23 20:33:10 UTC to 2026-02-06 14:05:14 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
12 sourcesThat can be very productive and clever, but be - and stay - aware that such polyglot solutions tend to be maintenance headaches in the longer run.
There is a really nice open source project out there that allows you to train your hearing and your sightreading, but it's written in the authors own language which in turn compiles to JavaScript and the headache to set up their toolchain is such that I haven't bothered fixing any of the bugs that I'm aware of (and there are plenty).
https://sightreading.training/
https://github.com/leafo/sightreading.training
It's written in a language called 'Moonscript':
https://github.com/leafo/moonscript
Which compiles to Lua. Which compiles to JS.
Madness. Nice madness, but still, it stopped me from being a contributor.
In Forth: The programming language that writes itself: The Web PageOne little-talked about advantage of Lua support is that you can now write your vim config/scripts in one of the various Lua transpilers like moonscript [0], or maybe even typescript [1]!
[0]: https://github.com/leafo/moonscript
[1]: https://github.com/TypeScriptToLua/TypeScriptToLua
[2]: https://github.com/hengestone/lua-languages
In Neovim v0.5No way, that's too soon! I only recently started working on a MoonScript fork[1][2], I'm not ready for HN! ;) My use case is integration with Awesome WM, and I hope to bring MS up to modern standards (whatever they happen to be) in the process.
The current MoonScript is in a really tight spot: the aging codebase doesn't get updated, there's no one leading the development, and the community has like 20 members tops. We need people! For both developing the language, discussing its design, and testing the changes. Feel free to drop by and say hi on Discord: https://discord.gg/Y75ZXrD
Also, there's another effort aiming to modernize MS: a compiler written in C++: https://github.com/pigpigyyy/MoonPlus/ - it's new, but it already implements all of the MoonScript language - definitely worth taking a look at.
[1] It started when I tried to add so
Read the rest
me FP conveniences to MS: https://github.com/leafo/moonscript/issues/407
[2] https://github.com/piotrklibert/AwesomeScript - nothing interesting yet, just a few ideas in the issues
I created a language called MoonScript in 2011
It is heavily inspired by CoffeeScript (and Python), it works as a transpiler for Lua. I've since used it regularly to code dozens of projects.
It's now powering my company along with a handful of websites and supporting libraries. I've also made games and GUI apps with it. The adoption has been pretty minimal, but I'm satisfied regardless. It has definitely improved my productivity.
http://moonscript.org
https://github.com/leafo/moonscript
In Ask HN: Have you created a programming language and why?Also, Moonscript which compiles to Lua is developed on GitHub.
https://github.com/leafo/moonscript
In Programming languages that are actively developed on GitHubParsing expression grammars are my favorite way to parse text.
I also use Lua and LPeg. Here's a tutorial I wrote on them: http://leafo.net/guides/parsing-expression-grammars.html
Additionally, I've written an entire programming language with them: http://moonscript.org/
Here's the grammar:
https://github.com/leafo/moonscript/blob/master/moonscript/p...
My favorite part is that you express the grammar in code, not some simplified language designed to write parsers. So you get all the nice things a programming language normally gives you. (eg. you can use functions instead of having support for macros)
I've also started experimenting with compiling LPeg style grammars to C, for even more speed. This uses the peg library: https://github.com/leafo/moonparse
You can see how the grammar looks here: https://github.com/leafo/moonparse/blob/maste
Read the rest
Excellent timing, just released a new version of MoonScript today, here it is in release form: https://github.com/leafo/moonscript/releases/v0.2.4
In Releases – a workflow for shipping software to end userssee https://github.com/leafo/moonscript/issues/35
. is taken. : is taken. propose a better alternate and maybe it'll end up in the language.
In Show HN: Lapis – A web framework for MoonScript and OpenRestyI didn't roll my own parser generator, I used LPeg: http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/lpeg/
It's a great library, I highly recommend it.
I've assembled a few parsers using various tools, and I must say PEGs are my favorite. They are very flexible and performance is comparable. (even CoffeeScript 2.0 is being written with a PEG.)
You can check out the guts of the parser here: https://github.com/leafo/moonscript/blob/master/moonscript/p...
In MoonScript v0.2.2 is releasedThis would have been cleaner with Moonscript: https://github.com/leafo/moonscript
In Zedshaw/TirIf Coffeescript is on here, Moonscript should be added too: https://github.com/leafo/moonscript
In Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language?