Oracle Proposes New Native JavaScript Engine for OpenJDK

hypnosec writes "Oracle has proposed a new project for OpenJDK — Nashorn, which aims to implement a high-performance yet lightweight JavaScript runtime that would run on the JVM natively. Nashorn will be headed by Jim Laskey, multi-language Lead at Oracle and the project will be sponsored by HotSpot group. The project proposes an implementation of JavaScript such that it can run standalone JavaScript applications via the JSR 223 APIs. Nashorn's design will enable it to take advantage of new JVM technologies like the MethodHandles and the InvokeDynamic APIs."

Comments

Useful as a configuration language

[dshk]

I have used Javascipt as the language of configuration files in a Java application. It replaced XML. It is a pleasure to work with Javascript for this purpose, much more comfortable than XML. I also considered YAML, but Javascript is more powerful and considering its ubiquity it does not need more learning.

However, I am not sure if real administrators would like Javascript in configuration files. At least it is standard, and has a good documentation, but the expressiveness of Javascript can be used in the wrong way too.

Re:Useful as a configuration language

[John Bokma]

If you mean JSON; YAML (1.2 and up) is a superset of JSON.

I don't think you mean actual JavaScript in a configuration file and eval-ing that....