Read Eval Print Loop Repeat

Galileo alone had risked asserting the truth about our planet, and this made him a great man… His was a genuine career as I understand it. Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Repl.hs defines the code we use for our REPL loop. Our strategy will be to have the user enter text, parse, interpret, then display the result, then allow the user to enter another line of text. If an exception is thrown, we will catch and display the exception, then return to our normal mode.

type Repl a = InputT IO a

mainLoop :: IO ()
mainLoop = runInputT defaultSettings repl

Here we define out Repl type using InputT from the mtl library to wrap IO. mainLoop will run the REPL with default settings, and is the top-level function exported by Repl.hs. that will be loaded into Main.hs and used to create the executable.

repl :: Repl ()
repl = do
  minput <- getInputLine "Repl> "
  case minput of
    Nothing -> outputStrLn "Goodbye."
    Just input -> liftIO (process input) >> repl
    --Just input -> (liftIO $ processToAST input) >> repl

repl is a recursive function which will get a line of texted wrapped in the Maybe context, if Nothing then the function terminates, if Just input then we evaluate the text using the helper function process. Commented out is an alternative processing line, which will display the abstract syntax tree, very useful for debugging.

process :: String -> IO ()
process str = do
  res <- safeExec $ evalText $ T.pack str
  either putStrLn return res

processToAST :: String -> IO ()
processToAST str = print $ runParseTest $ T.pack str

process takes a String input, packs it into Text, evaluates it, then handles errors using safeExec. Recall that safeExec return type IO (Either String a). This catches thrown exceptions and allows for the REPL to display the error, then allow the user to subsequently enter a fixed expression.

Conclusion

The REPL here is pretty basic, nothing fancy, just connect the user to the underlying interpreter and let them play! It takes input, runs the evaluator, then displays either the computed LispVal or the LispException.

[ Understanding Check ]

Every input is evaluated independently, that is, with a fresh EnvCtx. Can you figure out a way to thread the EnvCtx, so variables bound in one inputted expression can be used in subsequent inputs?
REPL keywords like “:quit” “:help” “:clear” or “:ast” can be entered to allow for the REPL to do different tasks, like show the AST, information about commands, or quit out. Write a quick Parsec parser to extract these keywords.

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