From: Nikodemus Siivola <tsiivola@...>
Date: 2002-12-19T05:27:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Nature of ruby


On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Dan Sugalski wrote:

> Nope. A compiled Ruby program executes eval by running the embedded
> compiler and executing the compiled code. Programs can generate
> executable code internally on the fly--it's not *that* difficult...

Eval is eval as in evaluation: a function that *evaluates* the
given string. Why on earth would you want to first compile it for a single
evaluation? In the following you would compile, sure:

str = "proc { foo }"
f = eval str
p f   # "#<interpreted proc>"
c = compile f
p c   # "#<compiled proc>"

Or so I would think. This is all a bit too wishy washy anyway.

  -- Nikodemus