It's a really bad choice for a Bash replacement
You have to reinvent the wheel every other day since the standard library doesn't come with much included
You have to reinvent the wheel every other day since the standard library doesn't come with much included
If you're stuck with the standard library (hello gsub!) and the application-specific library is an incoherent collection of functions, you're going to have a really bad time. That's the case too often because it's easier to plug the VM into an existing program than it is to create bindings that are not painful to use.
OTOH a well thought out environment makes you forget you're programming in Lua.
Just terrible standard library