[Needle-hackers] Can we have some examples, please?

[Neel Krishnaswami]

Eric GAUDET writes:
> Hi,
> 
> I just discovered Needle, and I liked it right away  ;-)

Thanks!

> I think one important "feature" that needle has is its c-like syntax (the
> lack of this in ocaml is why it's not more popular, IMHO)
> 
> However, I'd like to do more than a few commands. Most of the
> examples in samples.txt do not work (parsing error), Most of the
> examples in the slides work, but are too basic.
>
> I understand that Needle is in early development stage, but is it
> too much to ask for a list of the commands and their basic syntax? 
> And some examples that work? and some examples that "will" work
> "soon"?

There should be a new release sometime early next week. 

> BTW, all sources ask to read the file called LICENSE, but I can't
> find it in the cvs.

It's just an X-style license:

  Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Neel Krishnaswami
  
  Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
  a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
  "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
  without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
  distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
  permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
  the following conditions:
  
  The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
  included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
  
  THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
  EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
  MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
  NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE
  LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
  OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
  WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

> Although I'm not too good in ocaml, I'm willing to contribute to
> Needle. I think I read somewhere that you wanted to rewrite Needle
> in C: can you explain why?

Yes, I'd like to rewrite the VM in C, and the front-end in Needle.
This will make writing a C foreign-function interface easier, and I'll
need that to make things like GUIs work. That's going to be some time
in the future, though, because I don't want to rewrite until most of
the language's features are in place.

-- 
Neel Krishnaswami
address@hidden