That to me feels too dangerous. You'd need to sandbox every piece of config file you use.
I've been sketching on a shell/scripting language/system for a while and I've been thinking of it being in-effect three sub-languages, one nested within the other. At the lowest level: pure data, middle level: pure functional expressions, top level: imperative commands. I'd think that most use-cases for a configuration file would be satisfied by the lowest level, and some by the middle, but absolutely none would need the highest.
Then a config file would be "sandboxed" by the language syntax, with very little risk of it breaking out.
Comments
That to me feels too dangerous. You'd need to sandbox every piece of config file you use.
I've been sketching on a shell/scripting language/system for a while and I've been thinking of it being in-effect three sub-languages, one nested within the other. At the lowest level: pure data, middle level: pure functional expressions, top level: imperative commands. I'd think that most use-cases for a configuration file would be satisfied by the lowest level, and some by the middle, but absolutely none would need the highest. Then a config file would be "sandboxed" by the language syntax, with very little risk of it breaking out.