At 10:21 PM 6/9/2002 +1000, Damian Conway wrote: >Richard Nuttall wrote: > > Grammar::Python, Grammar::Ruby, Grammar::PHP ? > >I should imagine that the first two at least would be very likely, given that >we wish both of those languages to run on top of Parrot.
Given that by the time Parrot is beefy enough for people to start working on compilers for it (wait... it is already beefy enough!! ;)) I doubt you will see the real implementation of Python or Ruby done with Grammar:: as they will be racing the Perl guys to get there. And, since both of those languages are a heck of a lot simpler to write a compiler for, they will probably beat us there, not that this bothers me, it'll be good for everyone involved. Given that Python and Ruby have different semantics than Perl, there is more involved than just rejigging a grammar. You still have to get that parse tree down to some representation to hand to the backend compiler. I suppose that part means we have to expose the semantic rules somewhere for these module writers to access, or they have to emit straight Parrot instructions, which will spell y-u-c-k-y. I'm hoping we end up with an intermediate compiler that all the languages can target; one that is a step up from Parrot which will do optimization, reg allocation and a ton of other nasty stuff that language implementors will be happy to punt on. -Melvin
