Javascript from Python
In a way I’m disappointed to see python-spidermonkey released. It’s a Python wrapper around the Mozilla project’s SpiderMonkey Javascript engine which allows Python scripts to execute Javascript code in a rock-solid, battle-tested embedded interpreter.
Why the disappointment? Because just 5 days ago I decided that a Python wrapper for SpiderMonkey would be the ideal project for me to finally attempt to do something productive with C. John J. Lee evidently beat me to it. I can’t complain though, as I was estimating a good six months to figure out how to get it all working.
Pettiness aside, this looks like a really valuable project. In addition to being critical for such things as web based unit testing (John’s DOMForm does exactly that) it may also provide a useful “sandbox” protected interpreted scripting language for Python projects. Python’s own rexec module is meant to provide a safe sandbox for executing potentially hostile code but has been disabled due to potential vulnerabilities. The SeaMonkey Javascript interpreter is tried and tested in this capacity, at least in its incarnation within the Mozilla family of web browsers.
More recent articles
- Weeknotes: Parquet in Datasette Lite, various talks, more LLM hacking - 4th June 2023
- It's infuriatingly hard to understand how closed models train on their input - 4th June 2023
- ChatGPT should include inline tips - 30th May 2023
- Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused - 27th May 2023
- llm, ttok and strip-tags - CLI tools for working with ChatGPT and other LLMs - 18th May 2023
- Delimiters won't save you from prompt injection - 11th May 2023
- Weeknotes: sqlite-utils 3.31, download-esm, Python in a sandbox - 10th May 2023
- Leaked Google document: "We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI" - 4th May 2023
- Midjourney 5.1 - 4th May 2023
- Prompt injection explained, with video, slides, and a transcript - 2nd May 2023