What is Babel's relationship with a Lisp REPL? State or stateless?

[Lawrence Bottorff <borgauf@gmail.com>]

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If I'm creating an org file in a buffer which has source blocks for, say,
Lisp, then I can "run" these blocks of Lisp code and Babel will fill in the
"answer" just below in my buffer. Good. As advertised. But what is really
happening to this code? Does Babel invoke a Lisp REPL once, do the code,
print out the results my buffer and go away? Or is this invoked REPL
somehow persistent, able to remember what has happened before?

With regular Lisp and SLIME, you have a buffer where you write your code
next to a running REPL that handles the code when you ask it to. It keeps
"state" and your program grows. But this arrangement is not really literate
programming. Maybe good comments are possible, but it's not orgmode
literate programming.

But then again, if Babel doesn't support REPL "state," then what am I
gaining? Please enlighten me. . . .


LB

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