From: Dave Burt <dave@...>
Date: 2005-10-06T00:36:49+09:00
Subject: Re: [Quiz] [Solution] Lisp Game

Brian Schr�der:
> ...
> or even
>
>     splash bottle frog
>
> to work.
>
> Then I rewrote the whole thing in ruby style using a readline
> interface and adding some capabilities. I think it came out quite nice
> and I juggled a lot with meta programming concepts. So thanks to all
> the helpfull people here on the list I have learned a lot this week.

I've enjoyed reading both versions of your code. It looks a lot more 
comfortable than my attempts at retaining the LISP code's semantics.

The define_game_action method is particularly interesting: using "subject, 
object = *args.flatten" to un-collect arguments from a passed array (built 
by a magic method-missing) is cool. The coolest bit, though, is passing the 
parameter (local) variable action to instance_eval inside the define_method 
block. I don't quite get how that works; if you read my code, you'll see I 
defined that function into a separate method. I thought methods were banned 
from accessing local variables from outside their scope - this one seems to 
be staying in like in a closure.

I'm glad to see evidence in the "Eval and block problems" thread that it's 
harder than it looks for other people, too :)

Cheers,
Dave