making an interpreter:

following crafting interpreters, by robert nystrom. recommended by nikolai & ty overby at recurse-center. work done is in this repo: https://github.com/arjunmakesthings/crafting-interpreters

---

scanning:

from a file provided, we take all the bytes and covert them into strings:

    private static void run_file(String path) throws IOException {
        System.out.println("file: " + path); 
        byte[] bytes = Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get(path));
        System.out.println("raw bytes: " + bytes);
        System.out.println("bytes -> string: " + new String (bytes, Charset.defaultCharset()));
        run(new String(bytes, Charset.defaultCharset()));
 
        // if there's an error, indicate in the exit code:
        if (had_error)
            System.exit(65);
    }

^:

file: test.lox
raw bytes: [B@8bcc55f
bytes -> string: var a = 5;