[Haskell] Scripting language: is Haskell a good choice?

[Doaitse Swierstra]

You have some way to go. It may be helpful to take a look at our  
course on compiler construction, in which we explain how to use the  
various tools we have built to build compilers and interpreters.

I suggest you download the code and the tools and the lecture notes,  
and start to try to make some of the exercises. Our students somehow  
manage ;-}

http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/Ipt/WebHome

Doaitse Swierstra


On 2006 jan 25, at 17:23, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:

> Hello Jules,
>
> Wednesday, January 25, 2006, 12:29:48 AM, you wrote:
>
> JJ> I would like to create a scripting language, similar to Ruby,  
> Perl and
> JJ> Python. Pugs, written in Haskell, is a Perl6 implementation. Is  
> Haskell a
> JJ> good choice for me?
>
> yes, if you ready to learn many new things. Haskell is very different
> from non-FP languages
>
> JJ> I have no experience with Haskell (yet), but I like the
> JJ> concept of functional programming. Because Haskell will  
> probably be too slow
> JJ> for the final implementation, I will have to rewrite it in C or  
> maybe D.
>
> i'm not sure that you will not change your plans. may be sometime you
> will prefer to rewrite existing Haskell implemetations just to make
> your interpreter faster ;)
>
> JJ> Haskell can be very useful as a test/prototype implementation,  
> where speed
> JJ> is not very important. But will I be able to create a clean,  
> and easy to
> JJ> understand implementation in Haskell?
>
> if speed is not main goal - definitely yes
>
> JJ> The scripting language will be object
> JJ> oriented, and imperative. Is that a problem because Haskell is  
> functional,
> JJ> or is there be an obvious and nice way to implement an  
> imperative scripting
> JJ> language?
>
> it's no problem at all
>
> JJ> The language is very dynamic, and the source-tree needs to be  
> in memory
> JJ> because it is modifiable at run-time.
>
> JJ> Would it be good to do this in Haskell, and port it to C if I  
> like the
> JJ> implementation, or start in C? Keep the parser/lexer for the  
> source code in
> JJ> Haskell, but port only the interpreter to C?
>
> yes, you can use C and Haskell together. but C code can't walk Haskell
> data structures, so such co-working will need some manual work
>
> JJ> What would be a good place to start? I am reading Yet Another  
> Haskell
> JJ> tutorial, and I've read the first 6 of two dozen lessons in  
> Haskell. What to
> JJ> do next, practice/read more/start with the implementation of  
> the scripting
> JJ> language?
>
> read about parsec library and start :)  this lib already contains
> several examples of implementing small FP and imperative languages,
> each implemetation is just 5-10 kb in size
>
> -- 
> Best regards,
>  Bulat                            mailto:bulatz at HotPOP.com
>
>
>
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