From: han.holl@... (Han Holl)
Date: 2004-02-28T07:04:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Callback

"Robert Klemme" <bob.news@gmx.net> wrote in message > 
> I wonder though what you are trying to achieve.  It looks quite
> complicated to me and currently I don't have a clue about the real world
> problem you are trying to solve.
> 
You're right, it's quite complicated.

We had a data-entry program where people who weren't necessarily professional
programmers could write end-of-text-field validation functions in a very simple
programming language that looked a lot like awk, but with multidimensional
associative arrays.
We are going to replace this language with a subset of ruby.
I am trying to create an environment that resembles the environment they were
used to. They will be able to write functions that are all evaluated into
the same class. These ruby functions will be called with a lot of environment
predefined. A typical end-function could look like:
def date_ok(value)
  value =~ /\d\d-\d\d-\d\d/
end
These end-functions are alse able to fill-in other fields, do code expansion
and so on.
In an configuration file you can specify which functions will be called when.
An important part of this is to make it look as familiar to them as I can,
but still have the advantage of using ruby with all of it's wondeful features.

Cheers,

Han Holl