[Bug-apl] Erlang Interface to GNU APL

[Juergen Sauermann]

Hi,

another new feature in SVN 858 is a (currently experimental) Erlang Interface.

Erlang is a functional programming language with very powerful matching capabilities
and a good real-time performance. Erlang is the language of choice if you need
to do a lot of decoding and encoding in your application. Unfortunately, Erlang
is not so strong when it comes to the processing of large or multi-dimensional
data sets. This is where GNU APL kicks in.

With the new Erlang interface of GNU APL you can call APL functions from
Erlang, create APL variables, load workspaces, and so on. The interface is built on Dirk
Laurie's libapl library that Dirk used to create a LUA interface with a similar purpose. On
the Erlang side, Erlang native functions are used for accessing GNU APL. The interface
converts native Erlang variables and values to native GNU APL variables and values and back.

There is a new erlang subdirectory that contains the Erlang modules needed to access
GNU APL from Erlang. ./configure --with-erlang to build and install  all needed lbraries
and Erlang modules.

Enjoy,
Jürgen