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| | Lather, Rinse, Repeat: A Tour of the REPL (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05) |
 | | From within the environment provided by the REPL, you can define and redefine program elements such as variables, functions, classes, and methods; evaluate any Lisp expression; load files containing Lisp source code or compiled code; compile whole files or individual functions; enter the debugger; step through code; and inspect the state of individual Lisp objects. |
 | | For instance, you don't want to have to cut and paste a function definition from a source file to the REPL or have to load a whole file just because you changed one function; your Lisp environment should let us evaluate or compile both individual expressions and whole files directly from your editor. |
 | | This works because strings, like numbers, have a literal syntax that's understood by the Lisp reader and are self-evaluating objects: Lisp reads the double-quoted string and instantiates a string object in memory that, when evaluated, evaluates to itself and is then printed in the same literal syntax. |
| www.gigamonkeys.com /book/lather-rinse-repeat-a-tour-of-the-repl.html (4099 words) |
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