Java Projects - Second Edition

Polyglot scripting

Configuration is not the only application of polyglot programming. Configuration is executed at the program's startup and the configuration data is used as static data afterward. We can execute scripts during the application's execution any time and not only during its startup. This can be used to provide extra functionality to the program's user with installations that use the same application but are furnished with different scripts.

One of the first applications that provided this scripting capability was the emacs editor. The core of the application was written in the C language and it contained a Lisp interpreter that let the user write scripts, which were executed in the editor environment. AutoCAD, an engineering ...