It is possible to overide rebol system words like print, make etc., so is it possible to do the same with the path operator ? Then what's the syntax ?
You mean replace (say)....
print mold system/options
with (say)....
print mold system..options
....where I've replaced REBOL's forward slash with dot dot syntax?
Short answer: no. Some things are hardwired into the parser.
Another possible approach is to use REBOL meta-programming capabilities and preprocess your own code to catch path accesses and add your handler code. Here's an example :
apply-my-rule: func [spec [block!] /local value][
print [
"-- path access --" newline
"object:" mold spec/1 newline
"member:" mold spec/2 newline
"value:" mold set/any 'value get in get spec/1 spec/2 newline
"--"
]
:value
]
my-do: func [code [block!] /local rule pos][
parse code rule: [
any [
pos: path! (
pos: either object? get pos/1/1 [
change/part pos reduce ['apply-my-rule to-block pos/1] 1
][
next pos
]
) :pos
| into rule ;-- dive into nested blocks
| skip ;-- skip every other values
]
]
do code
]
;-- example usage --
obj: make object! [
a: 5
]
my-do [
print mold obj/a
]
This will give you :
-- path access --
object: obj
member: a
value: 5
--
5
Another (slower but more flexible) approach could also be to pass your code in string mode to the preprocessor allowing freeing yourself from any REBOL specific syntax rule like in :
my-alternative-do {
print mold obj..a
}
The preprocessor code would then spot all .. places and change the code to properly insert calls to 'apply-my-rule, and would in the end, run the code with :
do load code
There's no real limits on how far you can process and change your whole code at runtime (the so-called "block mode" of the first example being the most efficient way).