Custom REPL

[jonniedie]

It would be cool to have a custom REPL mode. For example:

julia> using MATLAB, ReplMaker

julia> matlab_parse(str) = Meta.parse("mat\"$str\"")
matlab_parse (generic function with 1 method)

julia> initrepl(matlab_parse;
       prompt_text = ">> ",
       start_key = ">>",
       mode_name = "MATLAB-Mode",
       )
REPL mode MATLAB-Mode initialized. Press >> to enter and backspace to exit.
"Prompt(\">> \",...)"

>> $a = rand(5)

julia> b = log.(a)
5×5 Array{Float64,2}:
 -1.21512   -1.33757    -0.716193   -0.603662  -0.386935
 -1.14326   -0.221876   -0.547273   -0.651745  -0.927566
 -0.857629  -3.53289    -1.4385     -1.46277   -1.0012
 -0.677553  -0.0738036  -0.779034   -0.715602  -0.0120908
 -2.45905   -0.314258   -0.0376099  -0.471509  -3.27706

>> figure; plot($b)

[musm]

Agreed

[jonniedie]

If you're open to a PR with the above, I wouldn't mind making one.

[musm]

Yeah sure. I was playing around with it, it's not bad. Wondering if matlabparse(x) = MATLAB.eval_string(x) so that output is printed, but this would disable printing output, which I think we should have.

[jonniedie]

Oh nice! That's a good idea. Is there a way to still interpolate Julia variables into that, though? I noticed this didn't work:

julia> a = 10
10

>> rand($a)
Error: Invalid text character. Check for unsupported symbol, invisible character, or pasting of non-ASCII characters.

[musm]

Yeah interpolation is not supported by eval_string