in reply to On Compiler/Interpreter seperation

It [the eval "string" function] could exec the compiler again, but the overhead of starting a process would make it far slower than in perl5. Anyone care to enlighten me on this?

Invoking a separate process to compile a string into Parrot would have serious performance implications. To avoid losing the power of eval, the compiler would need to be in the same process. I think it's that simple, unless someone has come up with a clever innovation.