A
read–eval–print loop (
REPL), also known as an
interactive toplevel or
language shell, is a simple, interactive
computer programming environment that takes single user inputs (i.e. single
expressions), evaluates them, and returns the result to the user; a program written in a REPL environment is executed piecewise. The term is most usually used to refer to programming interfaces similar to the classic
Lisp machine interactive environment. Common examples include
command line shells and similar environments for
programming languages, and is particularly characteristic of
scripting languages.