From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-10-05T03:58:17+09:00
Subject: Re: CRuby (Was: R)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <dblack@candle.superlink.net>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: CRuby (Was: R)


> Yes -- what I was getting at was the question of determining what
> exactly "the full Ruby language" consists of :-) I think I'm in the
> minority, in that I would actually advocate a formal definition.

Actually, I agree, so I guess I'm in that minority
also.

I'd advocate three pieces for this (with the third
being the most controversial, I think).

1. A traditional spec -- part technicalese, part legalese
2. A set of tests that must pass (could overlap greatly
   with Rubicon)
3. A Ruby-in-Ruby "reference" implementation. Not for
   everyday use, but as a rigorous/readable/working
   description of the language.

In connection with #3, I'd advocate making future language 
changes by altering the reference (R-in-R) interpreter, 
getting it working, and then translating (manually?) to C 
or whatever. (In other words, use Ruby as a prototyping tool 
on itself, since Ruby coding is faster/easier.)

But that is not likely to happen, since the vast bulk of
work on the interpreter is still done by Matz, and my
impression is that he would not choose to work that way.

Hal