A principled approach to REPL interpreters
L. Thomas van Binsbergen, Mauricio Verano Merino, Pierre Jeanjean, Tijs van der Storm, Benoît Combemale, Olivier Barais · 2020
Read-eval-print-loops (REPLs) allow programmers to test out snippets of code, explore APIs, or even incrementally construct code, and get immediate feedback on their actions. However, even though many languages provide a REPL, the relation between the language as is and what is accepted at the REPL prompt is not always well-defined. Furthermore, implementing a REPL for new languages, such as DSLs, may incur significant language engineering cost.