John Hughes
When I want to do this kind of thing, I use hugs as a back-end. I write the expressions I want to evaluate, or whatever, to a file of hugs commands, and then run
system "hugs <hugsinput >hugsoutput"
then read and process the output (choose your favourite filenames, /tmp/... or whatever).
A variant on this idea would be to use the 'Hugs Server API'. We used to publicise this API on the Hugs pages but it seems to have gone missing so you can grab a copy from: http://www.reid-consulting-uk.ltd.uk/alastair/publications/server.ps.gz You'll find a more up to date version in the Hugs distribution in hugs98/docs/server.{tex,html} The server API provides an interface for use from C programs but Haskell's foreign function interface makes it a snap to access that from Haskell. There's only one caveat: you will have to use GHC or NHC to use the Hugs server; you can't use Hugs to use the Hugs server. Bummer! -- Alastair Reid alastair@reid-consulting-uk.ltd.uk Reid Consulting (UK) Limited http://www.reid-consulting-uk.ltd.uk/alastair/