Hacker News Reader

I'm confused. This is a self-interpreter, but in what sense is it metacircular? It's an implementation of JavaScript in JavaScript; it does not appear to rely on the host's evaluation semantics, which is necessary to qualify as a metacircular evaluator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-circular_evaluator

View on HN

Parent interpreter is not host, it is JavaScript. No one said that parent and child interpreters cannot have the same language :)

You misunderstand: the parent interpreter is JavaScript, yes, but the child interpreter does not rely on the parent's evaluation semantics, which means it is not a metacircular evaluator, it's just a self-interpreter. See the Wikipedia article for more information.

It's currently 4AM here, so I cannot reason right :) If I misunderstood your point, my deepest apologies.

In this interpreter, user objects are represented as identical host objects, not implemented by hand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com