CODEWITHSUNDEEP
julia
neutrino
neutrino

Reputation: 924

way to "run" a string in Julia?

In Julia, if we have a string set to a variable :

a = "hi"

and a function that has the same name as the value of the variable :

function hi()
    return "hello"
end

can we like parse the variable and then run, or evaluate, the value in the string? If so , how could it be done using these example variable and function?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1033

Answers (1)

Przemyslaw Szufel
Przemyslaw Szufel

Reputation: 42214

You can do this in at least two ways:

julia> eval(Symbol(a))()
"hello"

or

julia> eval(Meta.parse(a*"()"))
"hello"

In the first way we create a Symbol representing the function and a Julia Symbol can be evaluated immediately. Once the symbol is parsed to a Julia object we call immediately the function (that is why there is a trailing ()).

In the second example we parse the Julia code as a String and then evaluate it.

A must-read is the meta-programming manual that can be found here: https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/metaprogramming/

Upvotes: 5

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