#3 Command to send block to nearest shell window

[John J. Jordan]

It would be nice to have a command that sends the current block to the nearest shell window (potentially only if it's visible). This would be useful for sending code to an active interpreter in a split window -- popup shell or otherwise. There's currently no great way to do this.

[Joe Allen]

Maybe related: For a long time I've wanted something like a matlab-like REPL: press a key to have an interpreter execute contents of a window (or block) and show the result. In this case it's OK to use files instead of piping.

You can sort of do it with macros, but there are problems:

1. Save current window to temporary file. The problem here is that there is no macro function to create a unique temporary file name. OK, so maybe use something like "tmp". But if you keep reusing the same file, then JOE complains that you are overwriting the file, but only after the first time. Something like vi's ! mode would be nice (write the file and don't ask me questions). A way to create a temporary file and refer to it indirectly in macros would also be nice. Possibly temporary files are managed: they are automatically deleted when you exit the editor.
2. Open a window: we have this with "scrartch" and "scratch_push" used in the pop-up shell windows. But I think we need a clean way to kill a process, in case previous interpreter is still running.
3. Execute the intepreter with the temporary file and append output: we have this with "run" / Esc ! Maybe if program is already running in window, it is automatically killed.