[j-devel] Script-friendliness

[Doug M. <do...@mc...>]

I noticed that the 'abl' script passes its arguments to the invocation
of 'org.armedbear.lisp.Main', but the latter doesn't actually use them
for anything.  It would be nice to actually be able to invoke Lisp
code from the command line, in a way that doesn't require starting up
the REPL.

I propose stealing some command-line syntax from SBCL, and
implementing the following:

  --eval FORM    evaluates FORM.  Multiple --eval options are allowed
                 and result in evaluation of FORM1, FORM2, ... FORMN
                 in sequence.  Prints the result of evaluating FORMs
                 to standard output (unless --noprint is supplied).

  --load FILE    equivalent to --eval '(load "FILE")' but causes fewer
                 headaches with shell quoting.  

  --noprint      Turns off printing of evaluation results, and any
                 other avoidable verbosity (for use in pipelines etc).

So one could put in a shell script:

$ abl --load mylibrary.lisp --eval '(do-my-stuff)' --eval '(extensions:quit)'

The infrastructure seems to be mostly there in the form of
Interpreter.evaluate() and/or Interpreter.evalString()--they woould
just need the comments at the top removed.  :)

Comments/brickbats?

-Doug