D interpreter

[Bruce Adams]

Gregor Richards Wrote:

> Bruce Adams wrote:
> > Hi,
> >    Seeing the link:
> > 
> > http://www.d-programming-language.org/ 
> > 
> > posted in another thread reminded me that DMD sports a nifty D interpreter. Something I always wanted for C++ incidentally. With all the talk on virtual machines recently I was wondering how the D interpreter works. 
> > 
> > Does it compile and run?  or use the embedded interpreter used for compile time evaluation? are these one and the same?
> > 
> > What happens with imports? Are they interpreted or compiled on the fly or required to exist already?
> > 
> > I know I should really try the experiment and find some of this out for myself.
> > 
> > How hard would it be to duplicate this behaviour in the gdc front end?
> > 
> 
> The -run flag of DMD is anything but an interpreter. It's just a quick 
> way to run the binary after you've compiled it. It has all the same 
> semantics as compiling software with DMD directly, including all the fun 
> of imports. 

Ah I was hoping for D doubling as a dynamic language. Oh well.

> The CTFE interpreter is extremely limited (and slow).
>

Maybe it should use a VM? :)

 
> rebuild has a similar flag, but of course handles imports.
> 
> I believe the gdmd wrapper of GDC already has this functionality.
> 
>   - Gregor Richards

Ah never heard of that one before I see it does pretty much what you say - compile and run.

Regards,

Bruce.