This is a spinoff from the the other thread about "Feature Requests".
The feature being requested - the ability to include arbitrary text inside a source code file (and be able to access that text from the running program) - comes originally from Unix shell, where it is known as a "here document". Perl inherited the idea from shell. Quite often, as was alluded to by the OP, the desired text to be included is source code for another language. Over the years, I've implemented this idea many times, for many combinations of languages. I currently have a system that allows me to embed WinBatch source inside an ordinary DOS/Windows batch file. In effect, this system is a workaround for the fact that WinBatch is missing the "execute from command line" functionality that is found in most Unix interpreted languages (e.g., sh, AWK, Perl, etc).
Explanatory note: In case, the previous sentence was not clear - for people unfamiliar with Unix - I am referring to, e.g., the ability to do: awk 'awk program here'
or: perl -e 'perl program here'
Now, having said all that, let me say two things:
1) I fully support the idea of including this functionality into the WB language. It is very useful. Of course, it will never do me any good, but that's just me.
2) One starts thinking in terms of workarounds - that is, ways to get the functionality using existing versions of WB.
One immediately realizes that is is quite easy to implement, provided one is working in .WBT - that is in uncompiled scripts. As 99% of my work is in this mode, I would consider the problem solved for myself.
Note that although I haven't actually implemented it yet, I had designed a method that I am 97% sure would work without any glitches. It took me about 30 seconds to do the design.
However, as I realize that many of the readers of this forum work in .WBC (aka, EXE) mode, the problem becomes a bit thornier. Here, I think we would need to use one of the methods posted here over the years that allows you to include your source code into your source code into your compiled programs (these methods are marketed as solutions to the all-too-common "OMIGOD! I've lost my source code" panics). So, if you use one of these "include-your-source-code" methods, then it would be relatively easy to allow that source code to be extracted at run-time (note that these methods encrypt the source code, so end-users can't get at it, but the program itself could), and then extract the needed text thereby.
This later all sounds do-able, but again, it hasn't reached sufficient a level of interest for me to actually do the work.
