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Sure they would.

You just can't have an app that downloads external code and then runs it; if all of the code that gets run is prepackaged in the app bundle or user-generated then it's absolutely fine.

Are browsers exempt? Because there are a few of them there, and they download and execute external JavaScript.

I believe all browsers in the app store that run js use Apple's UIWebView and don't run the js themselves.

They have to use Apple's JS engine.

> they download and execute external JavaScript

Yes, but they may do so only by embedding Apple's own sandboxed WebKit component. So the downloading, execution, and results are tightly controlled.

I thought those were running interpreters via javascript. User-generated code is really okay?

I don't think that's quite right, if I understand correctly you could have the interpreter so long as there was no download and run of external code.

I'm sure I've seen a Lua environment like this.

Correct. Both python and lisp (Lisping) already have interpreters available as well.

I installed this from the App Store two days ago on John Carmack's recommendation:

http://slidetocode.com