Re: How could this be implemented?

[Per Bothner]

Jon Wilson wrote:
> Or, for instance, we might do:
>
> (ls -a /home/fooguy/.gnome*)
>
> The return value of such an expression would be a read-write port 
> connected to stdin and stdout for the program running.  When eval found 
> a symbol in the first spot of a list that it didn't know,

You really have to treat ls as a macro, which is resolved at
compile-time.  Otherwise, it becomes near-impossible to
compile name-lookup efficiently.  And if you can't compile
it, it's a toy. See:
http://per.bothner.com/papers/beyond-scripting/

> ... and it is bound to some value that we can see ...

This is the hard part: what does "that we can see" mean?

You might fix this interesting:
http://per.bothner.com/software/#Q
and specifically:
http://per.bothner.com/software/Q/Qshell.html
http://home.pacbell.net/bothner/Qman.html#SEC64
--
        --Per Bothner
address@hidden   http://per.bothner.com/