Hi all,

I'm currently working on a 'workspace' feature for improved startup
speed and transparent persistence.

In 0.59, it is now stable enough to try out briefly. However, it has
problems with the compiler. This will be fixed in 0.60. In the meantime
use the -no-compile switch.

Try running the interpreter like so (all on one line):

java -cp factor.FactorInterpreter
-db:factor.db.BTreeStore:factor.db:64
-no-compile

The first time, this will create a b-tree database 'factor.db',
bootstrap the interpreter and save all objects from the user environment
to the database. Subsequent times, no source files are read -- the
database is simply opened and the interpreter begins executing words,
loading them as necessary.

Try defining words in a non-default vocabulary, they will persist;

IN: user
: hello-world "Hello world" print ;

... restart interpreter

hello-world
==> "Hello world"

The default vocabulary, 'scratchpad', does not persist.

Variable values are saved as well.

In particular, the following types of objects are persited:

- Tables. A table is a persistent namespace, created with <table>
(workspace vocabulary). Apart from being persistent, it does not differ
from a namespace created with <namespace> in any way. The global
namespace is a table. Vocabularies are also tables under the hood.

- Words and word definitions (except in the scratchpad vocabulary).

- Any object with a readable representation, such as strings, numbers,
lists, and so on.

- Compiled word definitions -- in theory anyway. Don't count on it
working in this release just yet.

It is possible that a persitent object might become unreachable -- at
present, no on-disk garbage collection is performed so it will continue
taking up space. Also, the b-tree still has bugs and sometimes the
database is corrupted.

Slava