Hi all, thank you for the replies!

The language this will interpret does not expose pointers (so it acts like the more modern languages).

I have started to try to wrap my head around IORef and that monad (anyone know of a "for dummies" guide to those?). I think that they will likely be exactly what I need.

Thanks again,

- Jeremy Mikkola

On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 12:31 PM, Joachim Durchholz <jo@durchholz.org> wrote:

Am 17.12.2017 um 22:03 schrieb Jeremy Mikkola:

How does one go about interpreting a language with mutable objects in Haskell?

The best approach I can think of is to represent the language's memory as a `Data.Map.Map RefID LanguageObject` where RefID is some type (probably Int) used as a reference.

It depends on how data is addressed in the language.
If you wanto interpret a C-style language where every address can be cast to an int, then that's the most straightforward (though not necessarily best) approach.
If it is just references to objects as in most, erm, "more modern" languages, the Id can be any type. E.g. something based on the language's data model - Int | Real | Record | Array, with type parameters as appropriate. Upside is that you leverage the Haskell GC that way, downside is that you'll need a recursive type (Array is really Array RefId, and my Haskell-fu is hilariously inadequate to properly flesh out that recursion).

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