[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Furthermore, if GHCi can (after some prodding by the user) launch ghc > to compile a module and then load the resulting .o file in and > apply some function in thus loaded file, doesn't it feel like an eval? >
Yes, I think both of your solutions are workable in principle and in certain practical settings, but they are both pretty heavy. In a language that encouraged the use of eval, I would hope it would be a considerably less expensive operation. My feeling is that as long as it's non-standard and heavy, eval will not become idiomatic in Haskell, and programmers who desire/require a lightweight eval will continue to look elsewhere. Further, these workarounds offer only the most rudimentary ability to handle errors or other exceptional conditions. Incidentally, it would be my enormous preference for eval to work on a structured representation of an expression rather than a string. This is one area where the weakness of Python-style eval is really exposed, when compared to Lisp. I'd suggest re-using the new stuff that has been introduced for template-Haskell here, and keeping parsing separate. Matt -- Matt Hellige [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://matt.immute.net _______________________________________________ Haskell mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell