How to evaluate an expression in the CLI

[odenix]

I tried pkl eval -x "1 + 2", but it complains that no module is specified.
Instead, I had to do pkl eval -x "1 + 2" EmptyFile.pkl.
Is there a way to evaluate just an expression?
I couldn’t find an example for -x in the docs.

[HT154]

You're right that there's no way to just evaluate an expression in isolation (similar to jq -n). I found myself running pkl eval -x '...' /dev/null on occasion when I needed that so I ended up defining a shell alias:

$ alias pklx='pkl eval /dev/null -x'
$ pklx '1 + 2'
3

There's some discussion and example for -x here: https://pkl-lang.org/main/current/pkl-cli/index.html#options

[StefMa]

Maybe we can think about something better and build a full pkl REPL? 🤔

[HT154]

pkl repl

😉

[odenix]

Next stop: LSP based autocompletion for the REPL. :-)

[bioball]

For a command that works on all platforms:

pkl eval pkl:base -x '<expr>'

[bioball]

Next stop: LSP based autocompletion for the REPL. :-)

Yeah, this is much needed. Would also be great to have syntax highlighting in there.