From: Charles Comstock <cc1@...>
Date: 2004-02-22T05:19:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby to Parrot compiler

Simon Strandgaard wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 09:54:25 -0500, Sean Ross wrote:
> 
>>This is probably naive, but I was wondering why you couldn't just use Ruby's
>>existing front-end implementation to parse and build an AST, and then build
>>a seperate generator that takes the AST as input to compile and emit 
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Cool.. a ruby2ast converter.
> 
> Question: is the AST a bunch of ruby classes, which can be
> manipulated/navigated through Ruby?
> 
> 
> One day, I hope, to extend my editor so it can interact with Rubys AST, 
> then some really nice things becomes possible:
> 
> * advanced syntax coloring which can identify syntax-errors.
> * obtain advanced help about the code under the cursor.
> * advanced code completion.
> 
> 
> --
> Simon Strandgaard
> 

I think we definitely need a meta-aware ruby interpreter that you can 
hook some stuff when it's parsing it's own file.  Or even just an 
interpreter switch that dumps the parse tree in a couple of different 
formats, if it's too hard to get it at runtime.  This would make it much 
easier for alot of things.

	Charles Comstock