From: Mark Probert <probertm@...>
Date: 2002-12-10T11:24:59+09:00
Subject: [ANN] ratlast 0.2 -- embedded FORTH in Ruby


Rubyists,

I have just completed the 0.2 update of ratlast
(muffled cheering from the audience :-).  You can
find it at your favourite RAA or at

  http://www3.sympatico.ca/mark.probert/download/files/ratlast_0_2.tar.gz

This is a pretty major update that now gives
ratlast access to most all of ATLAST, including
the ability to trace execution, checkpoint the
interpreter, return meaningful error messages,
show internal memory usage, and so on.

The major functionality change is a new way of
executing the Atlast code.  You can now use the
Atlast#run method (rather than Atlast#eval, which
is still there).  Eval returns a status code that
can be checked.  Run returns the last print result
(the first item in the capture list being returned).
This makes it easy to get one-off results.

For example,

  require 'Atlast'

  t = Atlast.new
  t.eval(": circ  ( r -- r^2 * pi)  2dup f* 3.14159 f* ;")
  area = t.run("12.5 circ f.")
  puts "the area of the circle, radius 12.5cm is #{area} cm^2"

If you have any questions or suggestions, please
feel free to email or post to this group.

Regards,
-mark.  (probertm@acm.org)