# Concatenative scripting language in Bitcoin

## Chris Double — 2011-12-31 01:23:04

    I thought this might interest some concatenative people. The virtual

    currency Bitcoin has a stack based scripting language built in for

    creating transactions. The intent was to allow extending the types of

    transactions (other than just "send money to address X") via scripting

    to allow various types of contracts, escrow, etc. Some information on

    the language is here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script

    Recently there has been discussion on adding an 'eval' feature that

    allows popping a program off the stack and executing it. This is

    similar to concatenative languages like Joy. the general proposal is

    here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0012

    This has raised some discussion on the bitcoin development mailing

    list about whether this gives the scripting language too much power.

    Can it now be used to create loops or otherwise work around some of

    the existing languages constraints and subvert the bitcoin transaction

    system. Discussion is on this mailing list post:

    http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=28602033

    This is an interesting example of stack based languages in real world systems.

    Chris.

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    http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz