How to use the REPL mode of sail?

[wanghuibin0]

I found that Sail has a REPL mode, which provides users with an interactive command line.
However, I didn't understand how to use this REPL, even after checking the output of the :help command.
Is there a complete example to illustrate how to use this REPL? Additionally, what is the design purpose of this REPL?

[trdthg]

Does sail have a REPL mode? (just curious)

[Alasdair]

Yes, sail -i opens an interactive interpreter. It's not super useful because you can't load files at runtime, so you have to start it as sail -i <files> as if you were building the model, and it also checks all the files beforehand so the startup time is quite slow.

I would like to change it so it can type-check the provided files lazily as expressions are executed which would reduce the startup time.

[rmn30]

I've found it useful for stepping through property counterexamples returned by the SMT backend.