[erlang-questions] idea: ml9 (sort of) in the erlang shell

[Vlad Dumitrescu]

Hi Ulf,

I don't use the shell that much :-)

On Nov 13, 2007 3:52 PM, Ulf Wiger <ulf@REDACTED> wrote:
> Allow for arbitrary syntax to be inserted in the shell, by
> catching lines starting with '@' (only because this is what
> Joe used in his ML9).
//snip
> - There are a few X-to-Erlang parsers (scheme, haskell, ...) that could
>   be plugged in and used with this. Plug in your own parser.
>   (Should it be possible to import/export variables...? Why not?)

>From where I am standing I don't see a huge difference between what
you propose here and what I suggested in my (almost just as
uncommented) eep draft about metaprogramming. Besides the syntax which
is debatable anyway, I envisioned to use this in regular code, not in
the shell.

Your

  @ parse_as(language_x), import(V).
  stuff in language x using V
  @

seems to be equivalent to my

  <|language_x| stuff in language x using ~V |>

There would be differences in the implementation, given the different
use cases (in the shell vs in regular code), but it feels that they
could be unified in a common framework -- what do you think?

best regards,
Vlad