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

[Bulat Ziganshin]

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