[metapost] Re: a "randomseed" workaround

[Larry Siebenmann]

Hi Karl and others,

 LS> It seems "scantokens" originated in mf!  Is this explicit
 > 'ruminant' concept or term in other interpreted languages?

KB> Unless you count the eval primitive in Lisp, 

Indeed, why not count lisp?! It's pre mf.

 KB> I first saw it 
 > in mf. (Clearly it's modeled on TeX with its ultra-flexible 
 > input mechanism.)

But TeX is distinctly lacking "scantokens".  It's eTeX that
added "scantokens" to TeX about 15 years later (1998).

 > Most later interpreted languages (Perl, 
 > Python, etc.) have an eval function, afaik. 

Perl does have "eval" analogous to "scantokens",
but that's post mf.

Don't know python...

Thanks for your perspectives! 

Cheers,

Laurent S.