Hi, Though guile is really a multi-language vm, it does not provide a simple way to run scripts for languages other scheme from the command line. I think we should add a --language switch that takes a mandatory argument, and use that to determine the language.
Other solutions for dealing with multiple languages have been proposed before, including guessing the language from the file extension[0], or from the file itself (via a something like racket's #lang). While guile could move towards those at a later date, I think the --language switch is a good one for now. Firstly, it could be implemented simply with, I think, only modifications to (ice-9 command-line). Secondly, it is compatible with these other designs; a future language guessing guile could honour --language, and where that switch is not provided would be free to guess; a similar situation would occurs if we went with a #lang type solution. Anyway, some thought needs to be taken as to how this will integrate with the other switches. In particular: -s, -c, -l, -e, and maybe --listen, -q, and --use-srfi. I think that if --language=LANG is specified, then the files given by -s, and -l should be treated as though they contained LANG source code. Similarly, the string argument to -c, as a string of LANG. -e would ideally be a function in LANG, but I don't know the details of how this works in the other languages, and so could be left off for now. If guile was used interactively with the --language switch, it would give you a guile repl already in that language, similar to if we did ,L. I think this is how it should interact with --listen too, though I'm not positive. -q, or rather, when -q is not supplied, is tricky. I think we should just assume that it is always going to be in Scheme. I'm open to suggestions. I don't know how module interaction works in other languages, so I also can't comment on the suitability of --use-srfi. So, thoughts? Counter-proposals? Flames? Have I missed out anything particularly obvious? tl;dr +1 to add a --language switch to guile :P [0]. I don't personally like this solution, since it seems fragile, and it's not clear how it would interact with the -x switch. -- Ian Price "Programming is like pinball. The reward for doing it well is the opportunity to do it again" - from "The Wizardy Compiled"
