# 22 — Implicit interactive commands (drop `!` prefix)

**Status:** open

In the REPL, maybe we can get away with not needing the `!` prefix.

Lua already attempts to run input as a statement. If that fails, it assumes it might be an expression (e.g. `1 + 2`) and wraps it in `return(...)`. If *that* also fails, we could try wrapping it with `!` prefix semantics as a third fallback.

## Execution order

1. Try as Lua statement
2. Try as Lua expression (`return ...`)
3. Try as shell command (interactive execution)

## Considerations

- Ambiguity: `ls` is not valid Lua, so it would fall through to shell — this is the desired behaviour
- But `print` is valid Lua (it's a value) — so `print` alone wouldn't trigger shell
- What about `git status`? Not valid Lua, would correctly fall through to shell
- Error messages: if all three fail, which error do we show?
- Performance: three parse attempts per input line