[27826] in Perl-Users-Digest
Perl-Users Digest, Issue: 9190 Volume: 10
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Sat Apr 22 18:05:50 2006
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 15:05:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Perl-Users Digest <Perl-Users-Request@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU>
To: Perl-Users@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Perl-Users Digest Sat, 22 Apr 2006 Volume: 10 Number: 9190
Today's topics:
Re: Term::ReadKey on Win? 5.005 vs 5.8.8? <nospam-abuse@ilyaz.org>
Re: XS Progamming with Perl 6 <dlking@cpan.org>
Re: XS Progamming with Perl 6 <nospam-abuse@ilyaz.org>
Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 6 Apr 01) (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 20:48:26 +0000 (UTC)
From: Ilya Zakharevich <nospam-abuse@ilyaz.org>
Subject: Re: Term::ReadKey on Win? 5.005 vs 5.8.8?
Message-Id: <e2e4qq$e12$1@agate.berkeley.edu>
[A complimentary Cc of this posting was NOT [per weedlist] sent to
Dr.Ruud
<rvtol+news@isolution.nl>], who wrote in article <e2d3kt.1dc.1@news.isolution.nl>:
> > P.S. Note that none of the questions in my preceeding message is
> > answered. Let me recall that they are about any guarantee (or
> > intent) to support non-blocking calls via Win32PeekChar(), and
> > what happens with "special keys"-presses if Win32PeekChar() is
> > used.
> When MODE is 0, ReadKey() uses getc(), and you get getc()-behaviour.
> When MODE is '0E0', ReadKey() uses Win32PeekChar, and behaves a lot
> better.
Thanks for your replies. However, note that "a lot better" is not an
answer for the question `what happens with "special keys"-presses' (I
mean Left, Shift-F6 etc). [I do not even think it would be a
satisfactory answer on ANY technical question ;-) - but you already
provided some useful info about non-special keys before.]
Thanks for your patience,
Ilya
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 09:07:26 -0500
From: Donald King <dlking@cpan.org>
Subject: Re: XS Progamming with Perl 6
Message-Id: <yMq2g.6521$ZW3.4209@dukeread04>
Sisyphus wrote:
> "Dave" <daveandniki@ntlworld.com>
> .
> .
>
>>What puts you off Perl6? What would you choose to use in its place?
>>
>
>
> Basically, my main worry centres around the lack of XS. I am continually
> extending perl (xs modules that interface to C libraries, Inline::C scripts)
> and I'm not sure that I'll have the desire/energy to learn how to write
> perl6 "extensions" - sort of depends upon how much desire/energy is needed.
> If perl6 had been written in C, just as with the earlier versions of perl,
> then I would have no problem with it. I can't actually understand anything
> I've read about the perl6 internals (and parrot's involvement) which leads
> me to think that it might not be for me ...... though, on the other hand,
> it's unwise to make speculations based on stuff one doesn't understand.
> (Then again, I've never claimed to have any wisdom.)
>
> Just *why* does parrot have to be involved ? Can someone tell me that.
>
Perl 5 *already* uses an internal format that's not too far off from
bytecodes, and there's already modules that can dump compiled P5 to
bytecode and read it back. Parrot is just a more generic bytecode that
works for more languages than just Perl. The goal is that, rather than
just Perl programmers improving Perl, people hacking on other Parrot
languages will also improve Perl (and vice versa), especially when it
comes to optimization fixes and portability bugs. Whether Perl uses C,
bytecode, or the Black Speech of Mordor under the hood doesn't really
matter unless you're actually patching Perl itself.
While XS-the-Perl/C-hybrid is going away, Perl's ability to interface
with native code isn't. That would be suicide, considering how much
CPAN code out there is for high-performance computation (e.g. Encode::*
or Crypt::*) or interfacing with existing native code (e.g. mod_perl,
Sys::*, GUI widget libraries like Tk and Gtk2). The native code APIs
are going to change *a lot* for Perl 6, but the fact that they aren't
final yet doesn't mean that they won't exist in Perl 6.0.0. (More
properly, future native code will be interfacing with Parrot and not P6
itself, so your native code has a good shot at working in all Parrot
languages, not just Perl.)
Perl.com has a nice article by chromatic, titled "What is Perl 6?", that
goes over some of the P5 warts and misfeatures that P6 aims to correct:
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/01/12/what_is_perl_6.html>.
> In an attempt to learn something of parrot, I tried to build the latest
> snapshot a few weeks back. It won't even build straight out of the box using
> gcc on Win32. Using MSVC++7.0, I was able to get it to build, though it
> failed a significant number of the tests. And working from examples, while
> some scripts worked, others failed with error messages that meant little to
> me. I lost interest pretty quickly .... and it's those quick losses of
> interest that will, I fear, be the main hurdle to overcome if I want to come
> to grips with perl6.
>
Well, considering that IIRC one of the P6 bigwigs recently said that P6
is only about 50% done, getting Perl 6 compiling today is not for the
faint of heart. They're still working on core functionality milestones,
not polishing developer betas. You might try playing with Pugs, the P6
reimplementation in Haskell, which last I heard had more functionality
than the P6+Parrot "official" codebase.
> For me, if I choose not to use perl6, and perl5 becomes unusable, then I'll
> probably just do it in C. (I can still see me writing perl5 extensions 20
> years from now :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Rob
>
>
Considering how ooogily XS code is, I'm now wondering whether or not to
ask you for your mailing address so I can send you a Hallmark card.
(They still haven't written back to me about my "Sorry you use Athena
widgets" card idea. Bastards.)
--
Donald King, a.k.a. Chronos Tachyon
http://chronos-tachyon.net/
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 20:58:22 +0000 (UTC)
From: Ilya Zakharevich <nospam-abuse@ilyaz.org>
Subject: Re: XS Progamming with Perl 6
Message-Id: <e2e5de$e72$1@agate.berkeley.edu>
[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
Sisyphus
<sisyphus1@nomail.afraid.org>], who wrote in article <444986c6$0$19831$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au>:
> Just *why* does parrot have to be involved ? Can someone tell me that.
This is the development model of perl6. "We will do all the changes
to Perl one can think of, and will do them in one scoop." Witness the
results.
Do not misunderstand me: Perl5 has many weaknesses which MUST have
been addressed (at least has them in v5.8). [E.g., use strict and use
warnings being not enabled by default; and many others.] However, all
the MAJOR improvements invented for Perl6 could be easily made
available in Perl5. (Actually, people are sitting on relevant patches
for many years already.) I would estimate the workload of about 1/2
of manyear.
Hope this helps,
Ilya
------------------------------
Date: 6 Apr 2001 21:33:47 GMT (Last modified)
From: Perl-Users-Request@ruby.oce.orst.edu (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
Subject: Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 6 Apr 01)
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End of Perl-Users Digest V10 Issue 9190
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