On Wed, 30 May 2001, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In message "[ruby-talk:16018] Re: java based interpreter and regexes"
>     on 01/05/30, "Wayne Blair" <wayne.blair / relian.com> writes:
> 
> |I saw a pseudo-BNF for an old version of ruby - can that be generated for
> |the newest version?  (to delay the pain of getting into parse.y)
> 
> It can be easily generated from parse.y using sample/exyacc.rb.
> 
> But yyparse() tightly combined with yylex() via state variables, which
> is hardly described by syntax rules only.  That's why I call it kludge.
> 
> 
> 							matz.

After doing some digging and (re) discovering Smalltalk, it seems to me
that one option for creating a JVM version of Ruby might be greatly
simplified. Turns out that the vast majority of Ruby functionality can
be duplicated in Smalltalk. Obviously the syntax is radically
different, but a smart parser should be able to transate Ruby to
Smalltalk, and then use a Smalltalk to JVM compiler.