From: itsme213 <itsme213@...>
Date: 2004-11-11T07:18:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby code generation: string vs. AST based (2.0 or beyond)


"Tobias Peters" <tpeters@invalid.uni-oldenburg.de> wrote i

> > This would require a published AST, some manipulations on it, and an
eval
> > that takes ASTs.
>
> It would be an exciting feature. But I sriously doubt that AST
> manipulations will be less brain-hurting.
>
>    Tobias

It's not trivial, but it is a whole bunch closer to my mental model than
string manipulation.

It also gives Ruby a nice push in the direction of MDA-like approaches.
Let's see:

- I can build domain-specific languages in Ruby.

- I'm asking to get a standard AST representation of programs in those
languages.

- If I write my language-definition language itself in Ruby (e.g. racc), I
also have standard access to the language definition of the domain-specific
language itself.

So I can write generic tools (e.g. transforms, editors, ...) that leverage
the language definitions.

We could have a very promising combination of MDA and DSLs.