The scala command demonstrated in the preceding section starts the Scala interactive shell, also known as Scala's Read-Eval-Print-Loop (REPL) environment. You enter a line and the REPL program evaluates it and prints a response (if applicable). It does this in an infinite loop until you quit the program.
In the Scala shell, you can write Scala code interactively. Because Scala is a compiled language, not an interpreted language, you can dynamically enter and execute Scala code in this program. Under the hood, Scala compiles your code and runs the compiled version. The Scala interactive shell is meant for ...
