function script engines

[John Pritchard]

I've tried beanshell for a script engine (from scripting.dev.java.net)
and found it to be broken. Specifically, "which(bsh.Interpreter)"
returns "null" rather than the classpath member containing this
class. Digging into it a bit, the "bsh.Name" fails to correctly
resolve this name as a class name. This bug (or related family of
issues) translates into a world of problems making the language unable
to employ application classes. That's a pretty big problem. Like,
"hello, anyone home out there?".

Rather than diving directly into fixing beanshell, I'm going to try
another vector. I've added the "java" engine -- a virtual clone of
the first idea for jbxml embedded function definitions.

We'll see if it's as interesting as I'd like.. in particular I'd like
it to accept unstructured code as a top level script, e.g., "for
(String name: listofstring) System.out.println(name);" rather than
needing to structure that in a method or class.

Hopefully it will handle this in a good way.

[John Pritchard]

Well, the "java" engine (from scripting.dev.java.net) is not quite
what i was looking for.. so i'm starting a derivative under "jbxml/ext/
jsh" that will get me what i'm looking for in a bsh replacement.