One of the Cutest things I have ever seen is the lisp interpreter in lisp.
I keep the original McCarthy book as a treasured item on my bookshelf.

I keep banging my head against the fact that self reflective
languages have a large number of very nice uses...
* Refactoring transforms and operations need to understand the language.
* Program instrumenting programs are very powerful development tools.
* The whole field of program analysis is almost left a begging 'cause
  C/C++ is such a mess to analyse.

We have a grammar for Ruby. parse.y How much semantic level fiddling is
going on in there? eg. In C++ it doesn't help just to have a grammar,
there is lots of ambiguity that only gets resolved at a semantic level by
context. eg. Type declarators.

How difficult would it be to write the Ruby interpreter in Ruby? I see in
the RAA a rbison, and a Rubyjit, and even (maybe?) a byaccr.

Could one translate Ruby text into a structure of Ruby objects?

What is Ruby inside? A Compile to byte-code and then a byte code
interpreter? Is there a how the Ruby Interpreter works doc in english?

John Carter

Work Email : john / netsys.co.za Private email : cyent / mweb.co.za 
Yell Phone : 083-543-6915      Phone         : 27-12-348-4246

Carter's Compass...

   I know I'm on the right track when by deleting code I'm adding
   functionality.